John 6 spiritual?

[Gavin]

I was debating someone and they said that John 6 cannot be taken literally because The Gospel of John says that it talks about the spiritual side of Christ. I couldn’t find anywhere that suggests this. Can anyone help?

 

[adf417]

I couldn’t find anywhere that suggests this. Can anyone help?

I think you should ask the person that is making this assertion to provide the evidence and then ask where the rule is that literal and figurative language cannot be used together.

Peace!!!

 

[John_Martin]

John 6: 63
The Spirit gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.

This is why protesters to Catholic truth say it is symbolic and “spiritual”.
But they don’t really believe Jesus’s words so they miss out on the Spirit and life.

How so? The “word spoken that is spirit and life” is this, and if you want the life you will do the word spoken in all earnest:

“Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day”

The wafer you eat does not make you alive (that is the flesh that profits nothing) but you now have this “nothing” inside you, and the Father is looking for the body and blood of the Son, to raise him to life. His body is now part and parcel of your body; God is pouring life into you and will raise you, one body with him.

The body does not save you but what God does to that body is your life since you ate it.

Trust Jesus’s word; eat and drink what he gives you; he intends to share his life in his body which you consume.

 

[MarcoPolo]

As previous poster mentioned, they are probably referring to John 6:63, but it is faulty to interpret that as symbolic only because Jesus a) is referring to his own sacrifice in that excerpt as well (which was real) and b) the story follows two miracles (multiplication of loaves, walking on water). For him to suddenly shift to the mundane takes the verse out of context, rather than the spiritual significance of a real matter.

More:

The Catholic Voyager: One of many ways Scripture teaches the Real Presence

 

[Vico]

John 6: 63
The Spirit gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.

Saint Gregory of Nyssa wrote in Great Catechism , 37:

For that Body was once, by implication, bread, but has been consecrated by the inhabitation of the Word that tabernacled in the flesh. Therefore, from the same cause as that by which the bread that was transformed in that Body was changed to a Divine potency, a similar result takes place now. For as in that case, too, the grace of the Word used to make holy the Body, the substance of which came of the bread, and in a manner was itself bread, so also in this case the bread, as says the Apostle 1 Timothy 4:5, is sanctified by the Word of God and prayer; not that it advances by the process of eating to the stage of passing into the body of the Word, but it is at once changed into the body by means of the Word, as the Word itself said, This is My Body.

https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/29083.htm

 

[PennyinCanada]

From the book The Eucharist, a bible study guide for Catholics, by Fr. Mitch Pacwa, SJ, page 73

…Therefore, it would be incorrect to see Jesus’ statement that the flesh is of no avail in John 6:63 as a rejection of the necessity of eating the Eucharist as a requirement for eternal life, just as it would be incorrect to believe that Jesus’ becoming flesh is of no avail for the salvation of the world. In addition, at the Institution Narrative, Jesus does not use the word ‘flesh’ but says, “This is my body”.

 

[Dan_Defender]

As this person you are debating with: how come if this is so not literal, that Christians always and everywhere practiced the Eucharist for 1500 years+ and only when Luther came along, the interpretation came into question?

 

[EndTimes]

Let us look at that segment in slightly larger context
______________________________________

Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

34 “Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.”

35 Then Jesus declared, “I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE!"
Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty

1. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me shall live because of me.
2. This is the bread which came down from heaven; and it is not like the bread which our fathers ate: they are dead, but whoever eats this bread shall live for ever,'
3. Many of his disciples on hearing it exclaimed, 'This is more than we can stomach! Why listen to such talk?'
4. Jesus was aware that his disciples were murmuring about it and asked them, 'Does this shock you?
5. What if you see the Son of Man ascending to the place where he was before? … The spirit alone gives life; the flesh is of no avail; the words which I have spoken to you are both spirit and life. … .
6. The Spirit gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.

I’m surprised that so few seem to see the let’s call it 'Spiritual Level Understanding in that?

IT IS JESUS HIMSELF
WHO WAS IN HEAVEN AND CAME TO EARTH AND RETURNED TO HEAVEN
AND WHOM GOD THE FATHER SENT …
WHO IS THE BREAD OF LIFE.

_

 

[Gavin]

They were using John 6:35 to prove that Christ wasn’t being literal.

 

[John_Martin]

They were using John 6:35 to prove that Christ wasn’t being literal.

Jesus was concerned that the 12 took him literally and that you do. He did not go running to catch those walking away from his hard words, and has no intention of running after protestants who attempt to lead you into doubting him.

I am watching your debater walk away and not shouting a reply to himself to “try to save him.” But what of you? Will you still remain taking Jesus seriously with debaters and protestants telling you that you are foolish, childish, to believe him when “surely he must want you to not believe anything literally” ? Will you let the debater walk away and not run after him? Is Jesus serious even when people leave? Let him leave without a last word.

Jesus’s last word is not to debaters but to you, and to whom shall we go?

 

[PaxChristi]

That could be a reasonable argument if you didn’t have verse 55

“For my flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink”
Original Greek >
γὰρ μου σάρξ ἐστιν ἀληθής βρῶσις καὶ μου αἷμά ἐστιν ἀληθής πόσις

the word ἀληθής means “true, real, true in fact”

This can in no way be metaphorical, because the word used is “real”