Continued
Thank-you for this…if nothing else, you have nicely demonstrated the degree to which bias can distort one’s reading of a passage.
I’ve gone back and read Augustine and I will admit that my first interpretation of Him was wrong. I believe you are interpreting him incorrectly because you have taken his words out of context…He does not say that "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood, ye have no life in you " means the Eucharist is symbolic. Start at Chapter 10 In his work
On Christian Doctrine
CHAP. 10.–HOW WE ARE TO DISCERN WHETHER A PHRASE IS FIGURATIVE.
14. But in addition to the foregoing rule, which guards us against taking a metaphorical form of speech as if it were literal, we must also pay heed to that which tells us not to take a literal form of speech as if it were figurative. In the first place, then, we must show the way to find out whether a phrase is literal or figurative. And the way is certainly as follows: Whatever there is in the word of God that cannot, when taken literally, **be referred either to purity of life or soundness of doctrine, you may set down as figurative. **Purity of life has reference to the love of God and one’s neighbor; soundness of doctrine to the knowledge of God and one’s neighbor. Every man, moreover, has hope in his own conscience, so far as he perceives that he has attained to the love and knowledge of God and his neighbor. Now all these matters have been spoken of in the first book.
CHAP. 15.–RULE FOR INTERPRETING FIGURATIVE EXPRESSIONS.
23. The tyranny of lust being thus over-thrown, charity reigns through its supremlly just laws of love to God for His own sake, and love to one’s self and one’s neighbor for God’s sake. Accordingly, in regard to figurative expressions, a rule such as the following will be observed, to carefully turn over in our minds and meditate upon what we read till an interpretation be found that tends to establish
the reign of love. Now, if when taken literally it at once gives a meaning of this kind, the expression is not to be considered figurative
Now to the text in question:
CHAP. 16.–RULE FOR INTERPRETING COMMANDS AND PROHIBITIONS. +] 24. If the sentence is one of command, either** forbidding **a crime or vice, or enjoining an act of prudence or benevolence, it is not figurative. If, however, it seems
to enjoin a crime or vice, or to forbid an act of prudence or benevolence,
it is figurative. “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man,” says Christ, “and drink His blood, ye have no life in you.” This seems to enjoin a crime or a vice;
it is therefore a figure, enjoining that we should have a share in the sufferings of our Lord, and that we should retain a sweet and profitable memory of the fact that His flesh was wounded and crucified for us”
Augustine is saying that since the words “Except you eat my flesh…” seems to enjoin a crime ( cannibilism) it should not be interpreted as the Jews and his disciples did as but as meaning something else.
Augustine Gospel of John #11
For when the Lord Jesus had said, “Except a man eat my flesh, and drink my blood, he shall not have life in him,” some who followed Him were offended, and said among themselves, “This is a hard saying; who can hear it?” For they fancied that, in saying this, Jesus meant that they would be able
to cook Him, after being cut up like a lamb, and eat Him:
horrified at His words, they went back, and no more followed Him
The Jews and others interpreted “Except you eat my flesh and drink my blood” as cannibilism which was a crime. Scripture cannot enjoin a crime or vice. Those words are therefore figurative and mean something other than cannibilism. Augustine says they mean “enjoining that we should have a share in the sufferings of our Lord, and that we should retain a sweet and profitable memory of the fact that His flesh was wounded and crucified for us.”
That does not mean he believed the Eucharist was symbolic just that the phrase does not refer to cannibilism.
What else did Augustine have to say?
“The faithful know what I am saying. They know Christ in the breaking of bread. For not all bread but only that which receives the blessing of Christ **becomes Christ’s body.” **(Sermon 234. 2)
"For He received from the earth because flesh is from the earth and He gook flesh from the flesh of Mary. He walked here in the same flesh and
gave us the same flesh to be eaten unto salvation. But no one eats that flesh unless
first he adores it and thus it is discovered how much a footstool of the Lord’s feet is adored and not only do we not sin by adoring it, we do sin by not adoring it" (Psalm 99).
“Christ was carried in his own hands when, referring to his own body, he said, ‘This is my body’
For he carried that body in his hands” (Explanations of the Psalms 33:1:10
“I promised you who have now been baptized, a sermon in which I would explain the sacrament of the Lord’s table. . . . That bread that you see on the altar, having been sanctified by the word of God,
is the body of Christ. That chalice, or rather, what is in that chalice, having been sanctified by the word of God,
is the blood of Christ” (Sermons 227 )
“What you see is the bread and the chalice; that is what your own eyes report to you. But
what your faith obliges you to accept is that the bread is the body of Christ and the chalice is the blood of Christ. This has been said very briefly, which may perhaps be sufficient for faith; yet faith does not desire instruction” (Sermons 227).
I hope the weather out West (I assume you are not in the Arctic) is nice as well.
