Eucharist, True Presence

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OK, I have a question. I am debating with a good friend of mine, who is a Calvinist Presbyterian. He’s very educated, and rather anti Catholic.

We are debating the Eucharist, and in the process of discussing the Bread of Life discourse, in John 6, he posed this arguement, which is a solid arguement. Probably the best one that’s been thrown at me so far, though I’m admittedly a beginner.

Basically he is saying that the RC position is that in half of the passage, we are taking Christ literally and physically, and in the other half, we are taking his words only Spiritually.

Can anyone offer any help, anything I should read etc?

Thanks in advance.

My friend’s words:

Christ says “he is the bread of life” and whoever partakes of that bread will never hunger again. SO……… if it really IS his flesh at the EU, are you ever hungry again? Of course you are! Why? Because it is not a PHYSICAL hunger. If it is a SPIRITUAL hunger is he referring to, and then it is NOT logical to see it is not a physical consumption he is referring to? Based on this verse that leads to 2 questions…How can the RC teach one can loose their salvation seeing that we will NEVER hunger again if someone in the RC truly ate his flesh? This contradicts his teachings very obviously. OR how can you have it both ways in one passage?
 
This is a pretty incoherent question. Is his point that Jesus later says in that passage, “The flesh is of no avail, only the Spirit gives life?”
 
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mercygate:
This is a pretty incoherent question. Is his point that Jesus later says in that passage, “The flesh is of no avail, only the Spirit gives life?”
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Yes, that is part of his question. Sorry, maybe I should not have used his words. They were cut and pasted from our emails.

Basically, he is making a few arguments.
  1. Christ says His words are “Spirit”, thus my friend assumes spiritual, not physical.
  2. The fact that Christ says we will not hunger, which is in a spiritual sense, indicates that the entire passage is spiritual in context.
  3. Catholics do not believe in total pre-destiny, or “once saved always saved”, but Christ tells us we will never hunger.
does this clarify?
 
You could ask then, if Jesus was speaking symbolically, why didn’t he try to stop those who left?..
 
Three is easy:
  1. Catholics do not believe in total pre-destiny, or “once saved always saved”, but Christ tells us we will never hunger.
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One can refuse to eat.

Scott
 
If I understand your friend’s point correctly, basically he’s saying that if Christ meant for us to physically eat His Flesh and drink His Blood, then we should never be physically hungry again. Rather, since we do become physically hungry again, it follows that Christ was speaking figuratively about His Flesh and Blood.

The reason this argument fails is that John 6 is not the only place the Eucharist is referenced. At the last supper, Christ takes bread and wine and physically gives them to His Apostles. He says “this is my body…this is my blood”. Christ was obviously not referring to a figurative idea here, but to the food He just handed the Apostles.

Also, remind your friend of the reaction that Christ’s disciples had when He spoke the words recorded by John – they muttered to themselves “this is a hard saying, who can accept it?” and many left. In every other instance of the Gospels where Christ is misunderstood, He takes the time to correct the crowds. But in this case He simply repeats Himself and allows those who do not believe Him to walk away. Even the Apostles understand that Christ was speaking about a physical act of consumption. Surely if they had it wrong, Christ would have explained more fully to them, as He did with the parables. But He didn’t. He simply gave them the same choice He gave the crowd: “Will you also leave?”.
 
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gmk:
My friend’s words:

Christ says “he is the bread of life” and whoever partakes of that bread will never hunger again. SO……… if it really IS his flesh at the EU, are you ever hungry again? Of course you are! Why? Because it is not a PHYSICAL hunger. If it is a SPIRITUAL hunger is he referring to, and then it is NOT logical to see it is not a physical consumption he is referring to? Based on this verse that leads to 2 questions…How can the RC teach one can loose their salvation seeing that we will NEVER hunger again if someone in the RC truly ate his flesh? This contradicts his teachings very obviously. OR how can you have it both ways in one passage?
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Your friend is mixing and matching too many things. Can you be more specific on which passage he wants to debate, or is he talking about the entire chapter 6?
In any case, the verse your friend sites is 35 when Jesus says, “I am the bread of life: whoever comes to me will never hunger; whoever believes in me will never thirst.” Is He simply saying that if we believe in Him, He will nourish us spiritually, just as bread nourishes us physically? If Jesus stopped at vs. 35 we could say yes, but He doesn’t stop there. If we read the rest of the passage Jesus tells us exactly what He means by calling Himself “bread”. The bread Jesus is speaking of is not merely a symbol, it is His own flesh. This becomes painfully obvious throughout verses 48-58.
So basically the answer to the question: what did Jesus mean by calling Himself “bread of life?” is not answered by speculation; we are not left having to guess about His true meaning. Jesus Himself gives the answer, all we have to do is keep reading:

Jn 6:48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh." 52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; 54 he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. 56 He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live for ever.”
 
Basically he is saying that the RC position is that in half of the passage, we are taking Christ literally and physically, and in the other half, we are taking his words only Spiritually.
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I disagree. However, you must understand what interpreting the Bible literally means. It does not mean to take a literalist interpretation (e.g., I am the Vine = he is really a vine). What taking the Bible literally means is to attempt to understand the Words of Scripture in the context of the literary form in which they are written.

Given the above, Catholicism does this. When Christ says he is the bread of life, he is indeed using figurative language. However, what is the figure? Catholics believe that the Christ part is real and the word “bread” is figurative. Let me say that again … Christ is REAL, bread is figurative.

Christ is not, on the other hand, saying “I am the bread of life” so as to mean that he is really bread.

Likewise, when Christ says that we are to eat his flesh and drink his blood, Catholicism interprets this literally as well (according to the literary form). Without fail throughout Scripture, when Christ teaches his audience and they reject his teaching due to a erroneous understanding the intent of his words , Christ explains that what he was saying was merely figurative (I can post examples later if you wish) and proceeds to explain the symbolism of his words. Likewise, without fail throughout Scripture, when Christ teaches his audience and they reject his teaching although they righltly understood his words, Christ repeats what he was saying. This is a literary pattern that ought not to be ignored.

In John 6, after the audience rejected his teaching that his flesh was true food and his blood was true drink, did Christ explain himself or did he repeat himself? He most certainly repeated himself. This indicates that the audience understood his words correctly, yet still rejected his teaching. If they had misunderstood his words, Christ would have explained the symbolism of his words. He did not. He emphatically repeated Himself.

Thus, Catholicism uses a literal (according to the literary form) interpretation of all of John 6 and rightly concludes that Christ’s flesh is “true food” and his blood is “true drink” in reality and not just symbolically.
 
The question needs to be answered by lookaing at all the evidence, not just the one passage.

St. Paul warns us in his letter to the Corinthians (11, 26-30) about “drinking damnation onto ourselves”, being guilty of the Body and Blood of our Lord, if we receive the Eucharist unworthily. How could we be guilty of the Body and Blood of Jesus, by receiving unworthily, if the Body and Blood were not truly present?

We can look to the early Fathers of the Faith, and we find that they understood it the same way. Ignatius of Antioch, in 110 A.D., wrote to the Smyrneans, “*they abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ”. * Justin Martyr wrote in 150 A.D., I]“the food which has been made into the Eucharist, by the Eucharistic prayer set down by Him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh are nourished is both the flesh and blood of that incarnated Jesus.” Origin in 244 A.D. shows his reverence saying, I]“when you have received the Body of the Lord, you reverently exercise every care, lest a particle of it fall, and lest anything of the consecrated gift perish. You account yourselves guilty, and rightly do you so believe, if any of it be lost through negligence.”

Does it sound like the early Christians considered it a symbol? In 373 A.D., Athanasius said, “You shall see the Levites bringing in loaves and a cup of wine and placing them on a table. So long as the prayers of supplication and treaties have not been made, there is only bread and wine. But after the great and wonderful prayers have been completed, the bread is become the Body and the wine the Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
The Eucharist is a renewing of the covenant Jesus made with us. Jesus’ blood is the blood of this new covenant. Jesus is the Pascal Lamb offered up as a sacrifice for our sins. Clement of Rome wrote about those “from the episcopate who blamelessly and holily have offered its sacrifices”, (acknowledging the Eucharist as a sacrifice) and this was while John the Apostle was still alive!

We can therefore heed the counsel of Cyril of Jerusalem, from the middle of the fourth century. “Do not, therefore, regard the bread and Wine as simply that; for they are, according to the Master’s declaration, the Body and Blood of Christ. Even though the senses suggest to you other, let faith make you firm. Do not judge the matter by taste, but be fully assured by faith.”

*“Having learned these things, and being convinced that the apparent Bread [The Eucharist] is not bread, even though it is sensible to the taste, but the Body of Christ; and that the apparent Wine is not wine, even though the taste would have it so; and that of old David spoke of this, when he sang, “And bread strengthens the heart of man, so much so that his face is made cheerful with oil (Psalm 103: 15)]”-strengthen your heart, partake of that Bread as something spiritual, and put a cheerful face on your soul” * (St. Cyril, 4th century A.D.).
 
Here is a question you may ask your friend.

“When is the first recorded (written) interpretation of Holy Scripture that the Eucharist is symbolic only?”
When he provides you the answer to that, THEN you show him the recorded interpretation of the Real Presence.

And so, per his argument, ALL the Christians pre-“symbol only”, were wrong. ALL Christians.
 
John 6 is very clear on this:

He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.
We as Catholics believe that Jesus Christ is truely presant in the Holy Eucharist…It’s NOT symbolic to us!
Father Larry Richard’s CD “Mass Explained” is great at …“explaining” the Eucharist.
 
Thanks everyone for all of the help. Unfortunately, we have already been through all of this, to no avail. He is really stuck on the fact that Christ was speaking Spiritually, not physically because He said “my words are spirit and life”.

Thanks again,

gmk
 
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gmk:
Thanks everyone for all of the help. Unfortunately, we have already been through all of this, to no avail. He is really stuck on the fact that Christ was speaking Spiritually, not physically because He said “my words are spirit and life”.
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Perhaps everybody just misunderstood Him for 1500 years?
 
I am no scholar of Greek, I can only repeat something I heard elsewhere:

The Greek word used that is usually translated as eat in this passage actually signfies a sense of “chew” or “masticate”. If so, it would be hard to misinterpret.

Can anyone confirm this, or comment on it??
 
For those not accepting the teaching authority of the Catholic Church there are other Scriptures to use which supports our viewpoint on what the words of Jesus actually meant. John 6:48-66 will bring out what Jesus meant at the Last Supper. I will give you a quick synopsis of these verses. This passage starts out with Jesus telling His disciples that He is the bread of life and that if people eat His flesh that, unlike their ancestors who ate manna and died, they would live for ever. This statement upsets many of His disciples because of the words used by Jesus in John’s Gospel. For the word “eat” Jesus used “phago” which means to literally eat, chew or consume. For the word “flesh” Jesus used “sarx” which can only be translated or mean literal flesh. Many began questioning each other saying; "How can this be possible? “Who could accept such a teaching?” To end any confusion they might have, Jesus becomes more emphatic as he continues to preach. Now when He makes any statements pertaining to eating His flesh (starting with verse 54) He uses the word “trogo” which means to “gnaw or crunch with your teeth.” As he finishes He asks, “Does this upset you?” Many of His disciples began to leave but Jesus didn’t call them back and say, Wait, you are misunderstanding me. He didn’t grab anyone and say, Please stop. He didn’t say, I meant that statement only figuratively not literally. He doesn’t do that because the words he used made it perfectly clear what he meant. Someday His disciples would literally eat His flesh.

Hope this helps from members.cox.net/sfobro/RP.html
 
Can your friend demonstrate anywhere else in the Bible an eating that is only symbolic?

Scott
 
Christ says “he is the bread of life” and whoever partakes of that bread will never hunger again. SO……… if it really IS his flesh at the EU, are you ever hungry again? Of course you are! Why? Because it is not a PHYSICAL hunger. If it is a SPIRITUAL hunger is he referring to, and then it is NOT logical to see it is not a physical consumption he is referring to?

I am not an expert by any means however I do think it is a physical hunger! Hunger for food is only one physical hunger. Temptations are another kind of physical hunger. Think about it. They are bodily events at their most extreme. Receiving Jesus body, blood, soul and divinity is the cure or remedy for ths hunger. Only those of us who have experienced this will understand me. I never make the best of sense most of the time anyway!!!

See, Jesus never said we were only to receive Him once did he? I can assure you that frequent reception of Holy Communion does in fact have a huge impact on the eager desires we call the temptations of the world, flesh and the devil. After all Jesus did say “For my Flesh is food indeed and my blood is drink indeed”
 
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