Even a really clear passage like John 6 is explained away as ‘spiritual’.
You sure don’t sound like any Baptist I have ever met. It is not as if one has to actually work at dismissing the Catholic (real presence) explanation of John 6. By and large most Protestants aren’t aware that they are explaining anything away…the interpretation that sees John 6 being fulfilled in a Eucharist involving a real bodily presence isn’t even on their radar, let alone something that needs to be dismissed…In John 4 it reads: “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.” (NIV) Now that is a pretty good start as to how one should interpret his meaning about eating real food. He also said in John 4, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst."(NIV) That is a pretty good indication that he is talking about spiritual thirst and spiritual hunger and not physical thirst and hunger. Moving to John 6, he said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” (NIV) Again, it is absolutely clear that he is talking about spiritual thirst and spiritual hunger… or is it that Protestants and the Israelites still experience physical thirst and physical hunger, whereas Catholics forever eliminate their physical thirst or physical hunger with their Eucharist?
This has begun to strike me as a form of gnosticism, whereas catholicism treats the whole human condition. Am I out of line in thinking this?
I strongly suspect that you are outta line, but it is hard to know exactly what you mean. What is it that you think Catholicism does to treat the whole human condition? What do you mean by the whole human condition? It it about one’s physical, emotional, mental and spiritual needs? Gnosticism had to do with denying anything good about the material/physical world. I note that, in the story about when sin entered the human condition, the curses went like this:
To the woman he said,
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken;
for dust you are and to dust you will return.” (NIV)
What is it that Catholics do to treat this human condition? Do their women suffer less in childbirth? Do their gardens grow fewer weeds? Are you talking about some other human condition that is treated somehow by dispensing grace through a sacrament? If so, what would that have to do with Gnosticism? My rejection of the idea that grace can be earned and then stored in a treasury and then doled out as if it is coinage of the heavenly realm has nothing to do with a Gnostic world view. It has to do with my understanding of the nature of grace. If the Catholic claim that Protestants don’t have a valid Eucharist is correct, then obviously Protestants are missing something (notwithstanding the fact that they are, for the most part, entirely oblivious to the fact that something is seriously lacking). You seem to have discerned that there is a hole in your human condition that wouldn’t be filled by God if the Protestant view is correct (in contrast to the millions upon millions of Protestants who are oblivious to this failure). Your view is so foreign to the way most Protestants feel that I am at a loss as to what you think that hole would be…Please explain.
Thank you.