John 6 and Eucharist?

[ncgolf]

bene7:

But the truth is, He did become one of us, the Son took on true humanity and subjected Himself, bodily, to the limitations of this material universe.

Where does the bolded text come from? Is it out of your reason or is there specific support for this scriptually. I am confused as to your reasoning. Jesus’s divinity was never lessened while on earth, but He was still the third person of the trinity. Is it the idea of Him being fully God and fully man at the same time. Jesus’s humanity does not overlay or cover His divinity. I see yours as a question of how both could be in the same person without conflict.

 

[mikeledes]

I really do not see what the problem is with transubstantiation. I can understand people who would argue against because it is “unbiblical.” However, I don’t undertsand the “illogical” argument. Since when has God been subject to logic? Try to explain the Trinity using logic? Since when does one equal three? Or how about a man walking on water? Does that not defy the laws of gravity? With God nothing is impossible. We know that the bread and the wine become the Body and Blood of Jesus because He told us so. I don’t need to see it actually occurring in order to believe it and it does not have to make sense to me. The word of Jesus suffices for me and I will not second guess Him.

God Bless

 

[jim1130]

mikeledes:

I really do not see what the problem is with transubstantiation. I can understand people who would argue against because it is “unbiblical.” However, I don’t undertsand the “illogical” argument. Since when has God been subject to logic? Try to explain the Trinity using logic? Since when does one equal three? Or how about a man walking on water? Does that not defy the laws of gravity? With God nothing is impossible. We know that the bread and the wine become the Body and Blood of Jesus because He told us so. I don’t need to see it actually occurring in order to believe it. The word of Jesus suffices for me and I will not second guess Him.

God Bless

Here is something on Transubstantiation posted on the Christian Apologetics Research Ministry site (gleaned it from the CatholicChef’s response on the CARM discussion so I cannot take credit for finding it):

carm.org/catholic/transubstantiation.htm

Gottle of Geer said the author is a Calvinist.

 

[CindyGia]

mikeledes:

I really do not see what the problem is with transubstantiation. I can understand people who would argue against because it is “unbiblical.” However, I don’t undertsand the “illogical” argument. Since when has God been subject to logic? Try to explain the Trinity using logic? Since when does one equal three? Or how about a man walking on water? Does that not defy the laws of gravity? With God nothing is impossible. We know that the bread and the wine become the Body and Blood of Jesus because He told us so. I don’t need to see it actually occurring in order to believe it and it does not have to make sense to me. The word of Jesus suffices for me and I will not second guess Him.

God Bless

BRAVO MIKELEDES!!!
THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE PROBLEM IS HERE!! THE PROBLEM WITH OUR PROTESTANT FRIENDS HERE IT SEEMS IS THAT THEY DO NOT “BELIEVE LIKE CHILDREN.” JESUS SAID

“Let the children come to me, do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God. 15: Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” (Mark 15:15)

WE ALL MUST BELIEVE WITH CHILDLIKE SIMPLICITY! THIS IS THE PROBLEM PROTESTANTS HAVE WITH TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THE MYSTERIES OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH! THEY DO NOT APPROACH THESE MYSTERIES AS CHILDREN - BUT HAVE TO ALWAYS BE SHOWN SUBSTANTIAL PROOF THROUGH SCRIPTURE ALONE! SANDUSKY AND BENE7 BASICALLY SHOW THEIR IMMENSE PRIDE IN TRYING TO PROVE THEIRS IS A “SUPERIOR” KNOWLEDGE REGARDING WHAT THEY BELIEVE IS “THE TRUTH” - BUT IN ALL REALITY, THEY MISS THE TARGET COMPLETELY!! THEY REFUSE TO BELIEVE LIKE LITTLE CHILDREN!

YOU CANNOT ARGUE GOD USING LOGIC! GOD CONFOUNDS THE CLEVER! PROTESTANTS WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND THE SUBLIME MYSTERIES OF CHRIST CATHOLIC CHURCH SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY WANT SOME KIND OF EVIDENCE THEY CAN REALLY BITE INTO!

THE PROBLEM IS THE GRACES GIVEN TO THEM TO BELIEVE BOUNCE OFF BECAUSE THEY ARGUE FIRST WITHOUT OPENING THEIR HEARTS TO BELIEVE.

JESUS SAID “BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO BELIEVE AND HAVE NOT SEEN” - THIS IS ANOTHER PASSAGE THAT CAN BE DIRECTED TO PROTESTANTS! IT’S THE SAME DIFFERENCE AS THOSE WHO HAVE NOT SEEN THE CHRIST AND REFUSE TO BELIEVE, AS THOSE (PROTESTANTS) WHO DO NOT SEE TANGIBLE EVIDENCE THAT CHRISTS’ HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH IS A SUBLIME MYSTERY!

GOOD FOR YOU MIKE!! AND GOD BLESS YOU!
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!

 

[Fiat]

bene7:

But the truth is, He did become one of us, the Son took on true humanity and subjected Himself, bodily, to the limitations of this material universe. From the time Jesus was conceived in the womb and born into this world He was subject, bodily, to the spacial limitations of this created, material world, as well as to all other human frailties (save sin). There is not one instance in Scripture where Jesus is recorded as being, bodily, in two places at ONE time (muchless millions). That’s because a human body IS NOT, nor CANNOT be omnipresent. That attribute belongs only to His Divinity, not His humanity.

He has retained His humanity even in Heaven. In Acts chapter one He ascended BODILY as His disciples watched on. The angels then said that He will return in the SAME way in which He left, in other words, He will descend bodily.

Bene

Bene:

Your argument forces you to conclude that if Christ is truly human, then he is physically limited to the physics of this world. Can you explain how Our Lord was able to pass through closed doors with His body? I’ve not been able to do this. Of course, I can also not do the splits while others can. Does this make them or me more or less human?

Fiat

 

[Mickey]

Fiat:

Bene:

Your argument forces you to conclude that if Christ is truly human, then he is physically limited to the physics of this world. Can you explain how Our Lord was able to pass through closed doors with His body? I’ve not been able to do this. Of course, I can also not do the splits while others can. Does this make them or me more or less human?

Fiat

Hello Fiat,

Bene is going to tell you that Scripture does not expicitly state that Jesus passed through closed doors.

 

[mikeledes]

I think when we look at other passages where Jesus is speaking figuratively in the Gospel of John, either He explains what he meant - as in the case of the food (to do the will of God) in John 4 or it is explained by the narrator of the story - as is the case of John 2 where the Temple Jesus reffered to was His body. In John 6, not only does Jesus (or the Gospel writer) NOT explain what He meant by eating his flesh and drinking his blood, He reaffirms it! The result? Many disciples stopped following Him.

God Bless

 

[jim1130]

Mickey:

Hello Fiat,

Bene is going to tell you that Scripture does not expicitly state that Jesus passed through closed doors.

Maybe Bene7 should change his name to “Doubting Thomas.”

 

[Richard_Hurtz]

CindyGia:

JESUS SAID “BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO BELIEVE AND HAVE NOT SEEN” - THIS IS ANOTHER PASSAGE THAT CAN BE DIRECTED TO PROTESTANTS!

Context, context, context!

This passage does not apply to the Eucharist but to the testimony about the Resurrected Christ.

Peace to you,
Richard

 

[CindyGia]

Richard_Hurtz:

Context, context, context!

This passage does not apply to the Eucharist but to the testimony about the Resurrected Christ.

Peace to you,
Richard

I WAS TRYING TO MAKE A POINT HERE!!!
PROTESTANTS NEED TO HAVE SOLID EVIDENCE BEFORE THEY BELIEVE THE MYSTERIES OF THE CHURCH! THAT’S ALL!!!

 

[wpr]

Hello Bene,

Sripture tells me…

in Mark 16:12 After this he appeared in another form to two of them walking along on their way in the country.

Mark 16:14 “But later as the 11 were at table he appeared to them…”

Luke 24:15~16 says? “Jesus Himself drew near and walked with them but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.”

Luke 24:30 And it happened that whie he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened and they recognized Him, but he vanished from their sight.

Luke 24: 36 While they were still speaking about this, he stood in their midst and said to them, Peace be with you" But they were startled and terrified and thought they were seeing a ghost…"

Luke 25:51: As He blessed them he parted fom them and was taken up to heaven."

John 6: 61…“Does this shock you? What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to were he was before?”

John 20: 19… "when the doors were locked, where the dicciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus cam and stood in their midstand said to them, “Peace be with you”.

A few questions.

1. Did our Lord not vanish in Luke 24:30? How can a human body vanish? (Your clever Bene, do your best, but remain Biblical please)
2. Is the appeaance in Luke 24 the same as the appearance in John 20?
3. John 6 says the door was locked. Why is this mentioned? Did our Lord have the key and sneak in? Or, is it possible that he “appeared” just as he “vanished” in Luke? (He does the same again in John 20: 26.
4. Did our Lord not prove His human form by showing them his wounds? What about his request for food in Luke 24?
5. Bene, finally, if you saw the Lord ascending to heaven where he was before would you beleive it is possible for Him to be present in the Eucharist by any definition?

This has digressed into a debate to determine if Transubstantiation is a valid definition. Thus Bene wants to know how God can he humanly omnipresent because it does not say he was anytime in scripture. Are we to argue with God? The gift came before the definition and the definition cannot possibly have changed what our Lord gave us. So if their is a better definition I wish Bene would tell me.

 

[Philthy]

OK, Im gonna wade in a little.

Bene, is it your position that the resurrected body is different than the pre-resurrected body of Christ?

Is the resurrected body composed of matter - ie atoms?

If not, where are the atoms from Christ’s preresurrected body? I honestly haven’t a clue, but it is an important, tangible question to answer with respect to this issue at the level you folks are trying to speak at.

Anybody wish to venture a guess?

PHil

 

[tdandh26]

Ok Bene,
So you are one of the few created beings that would say that God, who by His will created all things, is incapable of taking something and changing it into something else. But I still submit to you that the infinate love of God is beyond our understanding.
I must appologize to you then Bene, because I have no explaination that would help you to understand truth.

 

[mercygate]

tdandh26:

Ok Bene,
So you are one of the few created beings that would say that God, who by His will created all things, is incapable of taking something and changing it into something else. But I still submit to you that the infinate love of God is beyond our understanding.
I must appologize to you then Bene, because I have no explaination that would help you to understand truth.

.Paul says (and I believe adherents of the rapture fantasy concur) that "we shall all be changed, in a moment: in the twinkling of an eye. So one can speculate that there must be some change in the resurrection flesh which, while it must stille be “flesh” is somehow consummated in a way that will fulfill our current spiritually “pre-natal” condition.

 

[mikeledes]

I believe that John 6 clearly states that we must eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ. But how do we know its transubstatiation and not what is commonly referred to as “consubstantiation”? How come it’s not the bread and the body of Christ at the same time?

God Bless

 

[FCEGM]

mikeledes:

I believe that John 6 clearly states that we must eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ. But how do we know its transubstatiation and not what is commonly referred to as “consubstantiation”? How come it’s not the bread and the body of Christ at the same time?

Mike, because that is the teaching of the Church that Christ Himself established, and so that teaching can be trusted and must be assented to if one is a Catholic. Part of the Faith of the Church is that the earthly elements of wheat bread and grape wine become only the Risen Body and Blood of the Savior during the Eucharist. The Church has called that change which is part of the Faith “transubstantiation” in more than one ecumenical council. The explanation of this change of the elements is part of the Faith and has been explained very well by St. Thomas (so says the Church), but it does not require his explanation to be accepted. It does say that part of the Faith in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist IS the change in the elements of bead and wine so that only Christ is present in His Risen humanity under the appearances of bread and wine remaining.

Further, this passage from an article by Msgr. Robert Sokolowski in an issue of “Homiletics and Pastoral Review” (Winter, 1997); may help you better understand why “transubstantiation” and not “consubstantiation” is the Faith of the Church:

. . .to say that in the Eucharist the bread and wine remain what they are but acquire a new signification would contradict the logic of the Incarnation. Christ was not simply a prophet who pointed out the way to the Father; he was the way to the Father. He did not just communicate the truth about God, he was the Word of God. The believer comes to the Father not by the way and the truth that are signified by Christ, but through Christ himself, who is the way, the truth, and the life. Analogously, if the bread and wine were to remain bread and wine, they would point us toward the Death and Resurrection of Christ and toward the Son of God, they would signify him and what he did, but they would not be his presence and the presence of his action among us. The Eucharist would fail to continue, sacramentally, the form of the Incarnation, and we would be deprived of the presence, the bodily presence, of the way, the truth, and the life.

 

[javelin]

bene7:

Because to believe this one MUST believe that Jesus is not truly human. Do you believe that the human body, blood, bones and soul of Jesus possesses the Divine attribute of omnipresence? You must if you believe even the slightest particle of the host transubstantiates into the whole human nature of Christ, even at the same time in millions of places throughout the world. Nothing less than omnipresence can accomplish this.

Can you give me an example in Scripture where Jesus was, bodily, in more than one place at one time?

Do you believe the Son took on true humanity via the virgin birth?
“Consubstantial with us” as to His manhood, like unto us in all things, yet without sin?

Blessings,
Bene

I apologize for being away for a while, so I haven’t read everything between this and my last post, but it doesn’t seem this conversation has gotten anywhere in that time.

Bene, your argument that Jesus’ resurrected body must have some sort of divine attribute in order to be present on our altars in the Eucharist is simply not true. So you can argue all you want that Jesus was fully human, and to that we will say “Amen”!

But try to use that against the doctrine of the Eucharist and you will move no one.

Do you honestly believe that Jesus needed to make the bread and fish divine in order for them to be multiplied for the 5,000 that were fed? Did He need to grant His body a divine attribute – making His body (and thus, Him, by your logic) not really human – in order for Him to walk on water (and that was before His resurrection)? Did He make Lazarus into a god when He rose him from the dead (after all, only a body with a divine attribute can rise from the dead, for no mere human body can do that)?

As I said before, John specifically prefigures the Eucharist in his gospel with the feeding of the 5,000, where an offering is multiplied to feed His followers, while never being completely exhausted (there was enough to feed everyone and more).

Your hypothesis simply does not hold when applied to other clear passages of scripture. Therefore, it must be false.

I’m not certain there is a clear understanding of the doctrine here, so let me re-state something that has been brought up before. The doctrine of the Real Presence in the Eucharist teaches that Jesus is fully present in the eucharistic species. Not just His body, and not just His spirit or divinity, but both. What it does not teach is that all of His divinity and all of His body is present in each eucharistic species. Do you understand the important distiction? Each host does not become a cloned (as you put it earlier), physically complete body of Jesus. Rather, each host becomes His flesh and blood (part of it, not all of it), and is indwelt (just as Jesus’ own body was indwelt when He was on earth) with Jesus’ soul and divine nature.

The Church explicitly says “Fully Present” to underscore the fact that if it is not Jesus’ flesh (the matter) infused with His soul, and divinity, it is not really Jesus. If it is not Jesus, then humanity has no worthy offering to God.

I hope your Christmas was a joyful one, and that your new year is blessed.

Peace,
javelin

 

[Richard_Hurtz]

Javelin,

Are you sure about this?

javelin:

I’m not certain there is a clear understanding of the doctrine here, so let me re-state something that has been brought up before. The doctrine of the Real Presence in the Eucharist teaches that Jesus is fully present in the eucharistic species. Not just His body, and not just His spirit or divinity, but both. What it does not teach is that all of His divinity and all of His body is present in each eucharistic species. Do you understand the important distiction? Each host does not become a cloned (as you put it earlier), physically complete body of Jesus. Rather, each host becomes His flesh and blood (part of it, not all of it), and is indwelt (just as Jesus’ own body was indwelt when He was on earth) with Jesus’ soul and divine nature.

newadvent.org/cathen/05573a.htm

(b) The second problem arises from the Totality of Presence, which means that Christ in His entirety is present in the whole of the Host and in each smallest part thereof, as the spiritual soul is present in the human body [see above, (2)]. The difficulty reaches its climax when we consider that there is no question here of the Soul or the Divinity of Christ, but of His Body, which, with its head, trunk, and members, has assumed a mode of existence spiritual and independent of space, a mode of existence, indeed, concerning which neither experience nor any system of philosophy can have the least inkling. That the idea of conversion of corporeal matter into a spirit can in no way be entertained, is clear from the material substance of the Eucharistic Body itself. Even the above-mentioned separability of quantity from substance gives us no clue to the solution, since according to the best founded opinions not only the substance of Christ’s Body, but by His own wise arrangement, its corporeal quantity, i.e. its full size, with its complete organization of integral members and limbs, is present within the diminutive limits of the Host and in each portion thereof.

Baltimore Catechism 4, Lesson 22: Question 238

Q. What is the Holy Eucharist?

A. The Holy Eucharist is the Sacrament which contains the body and blood, soul and divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ under the appearances of bread and wine.

When we say “contains,” we mean the Sacrament which is the body and blood, etc. The Holy Eucharist is the same living body of Our Lord which He had upon earth; but it is in a new form, under the appearances of bread and wine. Therefore Our Lord in the tabernacle can see and hear us.

Blessings,
Richard

 

[javelin]

Richard_Hurtz:

Javelin,

Are you sure about this?

newadvent.org/cathen/05573a.htm

Blessings,
Richard

No, but I certainly would be interested in seeing what authoritative sources cite this position. I honestly do not believe that it is at all necessary to the doctrine. Is there a Church council that definitively states that each host contains all of Jesus’ physical body? The notion that Jesus has physical eyes and ears that can see and hear, in each host, is new to me.

Peace,
javelin

 

[Richard_Hurtz]

javelin:

No, but I certainly would be interested in seeing what authoritative sources cite this position. I honestly do not believe that it is at all necessary to the doctrine. Is there a Church council that definitively states that each host contains all of Jesus’ physical body? The notion that Jesus has physical eyes and ears that can see and hear, in each host, is new to me.

Peace,
javelin

Trent - Thirteenth Session

history.hanover.edu/texts/trent/ct13.html

CHAPTER III.
On the excellency of the most holy Eucharist over the rest of the Sacraments.
The most holy Eucharist has indeed this in common with the rest of the sacraments, that it is a symbol of a sacred thing, and is a visible form of an invisible grace; but there is found in the Eucharist this excellent and peculiar thing, that the other sacraments have then first the power of sanctifying when one uses them, whereas in the Eucharist, before being used, there is the Author Himself of sanctity. For the apostles had not as yet received the Eucharist from the hand of the Lord, when nevertheless Himself affirmed with truth that to be His own body which He presented (to them). And this faith has ever been in the Church of God, that, immediately after the consecration, the veritable Body of our Lord, and His veritable Blood, together with His soul and divinity, are under the species of bread and wine; but the Body indeed under the species of bread, and the Blood under the species of wine, by the force of the words; but the body itself under the species of wine, and the blood under the species of bread, and the soul under both, by the force of that natural connexion and concomitancy whereby the parts of Christ our Lord, who hath now risen from the dead, to die no more, are united together; and the divinity, furthermore, on account of the admirable hypostatical union thereof with His body and soul. Wherefore it is most true, that as much is contained under either species as under both; for Christ whole and entire is under the species of bread, and under any part whatsoever of that species; likewise the whole (Christ) is under the species of wine, and under the parts thereof.

Blessings,
Richard