Augustine corrects the literal interpretation and affirms that “eating” is a positive metaphor for believing.
This is then to eat the meat, not that which perisheth, but that which endureth unto eternal life. To what purpose dost thou make ready teeth and stomach? Believe, and thou hast eaten already (Augustine, Tractate 25).
For to believe on Him is to eat the living bread. He that believes eats; he is sated invisibly, because invisibly is he born again (Augustine, Tractate 26).
Deuteronomy 8:3
in order to show you that not by bread alone does man live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the LORD.
this Scripture to go along with augustine’s statment ‘endureth unto eternal life’
Bread to the Jewish people is the Torah and Jesus is the Word made Flesh but read again as to augustine’s words on John 6, there is more. For to believe on Him is to eat the LIVING BREAD
this is what the early church fathers taught but somehow the church has strayed away from this the eucharist was not indoctrinated until the 1500’s, i believe. but there are many on here who have studied the history of the church that could be more precise. now of course to put something as truth 1500 years later, whoa.
turn to the Cross of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins my friends
God bless
“For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.” Justin Martyr, First Apology, 66 (A.D. 110-165).
“He acknowledged the cup (which is a part of the creation) as his own blood, from which he bedews our blood; and the bread (also a part of creation) he affirmed to be his own body, from which he gives increase to our bodies.” Irenaeus, Against Heresies, V:2,2 (c. A.D. 200).
"Then, having taken the bread and given it to His disciples, He made it His own body, by saying, ‘This is my body,’ that is, the figure of my body. A figure, however, there could not have been, unless there were first a veritable body. An empty thing, or phantom, is incapable of a figure. If, however, (as Marcion might say,) He pretended the bread was His body, because He lacked the truth of bodily substance, it follows that He must have given bread for us. It would contribute very well to the support of Marcion’s theory of a phantom body, that bread should have been crucified! But why call His body bread, and not rather (some other edible thing, say) a melon, which Marcion must have had in lieu of a heart! He did not understand how ancient was this figure of the body of Christ, who said Himself by Jeremiah: ‘I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter, and I knew not that they devised a device against me, saying, Let us cast the tree upon His bread,’ which means, of course, the cross upon His body. And thus, casting light, as He always did, upon the ancient prophecies, He declared plainly enough what He meant by the bread, when He called the bread His own body.” Tertullian, Against Marcion, 40 (A.D. 212).
“He likewise, when mentioning the cup and making the new testament to be sealed ‘in His blood,’ affirms the reality of His body. For no blood can belong to a body which is not a body of flesh. If any sort of body were presented to our view, which is not one of flesh, not being fleshly, it would not possess blood. Thus, from the evidence of the flesh, we get a proof of the body, and a proof of the flesh from the evidence of the blood. In order, however, that you may discover how anciently wine is used as a figure for blood, turn to Isaiah, who asks, ‘Who is this that cometh from Edom, from Bosor with garments dyed in red, so glorious in His apparel, in the greatness of his might? Why are thy garments red, and thy raiment as his who cometh from the treading of the full winepress?’ The prophetic Spirit contemplates the Lord as if He were already on His way to His passion, clad in His fleshly nature; and as He was to suffer therein, He represents the bleeding condition of His flesh under the metaphor of garments dyed in red, as if reddened in the treading and crushing process of the wine-press, from which the labourers descend reddened with the wine-juice, like men stained in blood. Much more clearly still does the book of Genesis foretell this, when (in the blessing of Judah, out of whose tribe Christ was to come according to the flesh) it even then delineated Christ in the person of that patriarch, saying, ‘He washed His garments in wine, and His clothes in the blood of grapes’–in His garments and clothes the prophecy pointed out his flesh, and His blood in the wine. Thus did He now consecrate His blood in wine, who then (by the patriarch) used the figure of wine to describe His blood." Tertullian, Against Marcion, 40 (A.D. 212).
“He once in Cana of Galilee, turned the water into wine, akin to blood, and is it incredible that He should have turned wine into blood?” Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, XXII:4 (c. A.D. 350).
“Having learn these things, and been fully assured that the seeming bread is not bread, though sensible to taste, but the Body of Christ; and that the seeming wine is not wine, though the taste will have it so, but the Blood of Christ; and that of this David sung of old, saying, And bread strengtheneth man’s heart, to make his face to shine with oil, ‘strengthen thou thine heart,’ by partaking thereof as spiritual, and “make the face of thy soul to shine.”” Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, XXII:8 (c. A.D. 350).
“‘And was carried in His Own Hands:’ how ‘carried in His Own Hands’? Because when He commended His Own Body and Blood, He took into His Hands that which the faithful know; and in a manner carried Himself, when He said, ‘This is My Body.’” Augustine, On the Psalms, 33:1, 10 (A.D. 392-418).
