Protestant interpretation of John 6:54...

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Hello all,

I’d like to hear from some non-catholic Christians on their interpretation of John 6:54.

How does one eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ according to you?

God bless,
Noel.

John 6

54 Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say unto you: Except
you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you
shall not have life in you.
55 He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath
everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day.
56 For my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed.
57 He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, abideth in
me, and I in him.
 
One weird explanation I heard was that the Word was made Flesh, so what Jesus really meant was to consume His Word (His Gospel) and just obey what He commanded.

I bet that explanation doesn’t work out right, like if we took the original Greek words. That explanation about the Word is one you’d probably find just within the Evangelical American Fundamentalists.

And of course there are the verses that explicitly say “My Flesh is real Flesh, and My Blood is real Blood.” I really don’t know how they can slice it any other way than to mean that it’s really Jesus.

Then again, remember that there are some protestant groups that believe that the Eucharist is Jesus, so their interpretation would be more or less the same as ours. The thing is though, none of them have Apostolic Succession so they don’t have the real Eucharist even if they believe they do (no offense meant to protestants, but that’s just the judgement of Leo XIII and it’s still enforced today).

J.J.
 
JesuXPIPassio said:
One weird explanation I heard was that the Word was made Flesh, so what Jesus really meant was to consume His Word (His Gospel) and just obey what He commanded.
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Yes, that is the common explanation. However, in that case at the Last Supper Jesus would not have held up bread and wine and said “this is my body, this is my blood”. He would have held up scriptures and said “this is my body, this is my blood” But He didn’t.
 
I am among those Protestants who believe that Christ meant literally that we partake of his flesh and blood in the Eucharist. However, I would hazard a guess that most Protestants take Christ’s words here as having been spoken in a figurative sense. Plenty of threads on this one which would show you the arguments both for, and against, a literal understanding vs. a symbolic understanding of the Eucharist.
 
In a debate I listened to, James White said that the whole bread of life discourse has to be interpreted in light of John 6:35
Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.
He says that the bread of life discourse is only talking about coming to Jesus and believing in Him, so it is should not be taken in literally but understood as symbolic language.
I don’t agree with him, but that is what he said. I would think that you would interpret it in light of the whole Bible and salvation history, which would point to Christ being the Lamb of God, that he gave himself as a Passover sacrifice, and we have to partake in that sacrifice, by eathing the flesh of the lamb, just like the jews ate the roasted lamb during the original passover.
 
Greetings everyone:

I just wanted to bring up a point concerning the Eucharist and Protestantism.

I believe debating scripture after scripture with a protestant can be fruitless. I believe the Protestant position of the Eucharist is most strongly refuted by history and the early church fathers.

When you look at the earliest church fathers like Bishop Ignatius of Antioch AD 110 who was taught directly by the Apostle John, and contemporary of Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna, and see what he wrote on the issue of the real presence there is no doubt as to the interpretation of John 6. This issue of doubting the real presence was a non issue in history until the reformation.

Here is a few quotes from Ignatius of Antioch:

“Consider how contrary to the mind of God are the heterodox in regard to the grace of God which has come to us. They have no regard for charity, none for the widow, the orphan, the oppressed, none for the man in prison, the hungry or the thirsty. They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not admit that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, the flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in His graciousness, raised from the dead.” “Letter to the Smyrnaeans”, paragraph 6. circa 80-110 A.D.

“Come together in common, one and all without exception in charity, in one faith and in one Jesus Christ, who is of the race of David according to the flesh, the son of man, and the Son of God, so that with undivided mind you may obey the bishop and the priests, and break one Bread which is the medicine of immortality and the antidote against death, enabling us to live forever in Jesus Christ.” -“Letter to the Ephesians”, paragraph 20, c. 80-110 A.D.

“I have no taste for the food that perishes nor for the pleasures of this life. I want the Bread of God which is the Flesh of Christ, who was the seed of David; and for drink I desire His Blood which is love that cannot be destroyed.”
-“Letter to the Romans”, paragraph 7, circa 80-110 A.D.

Thanks for listening all…Pax Christi +++:)
 
Where it says in John 1:14" And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us" Since the Word of God became flesh we must not only consume His Words, but His flesh as well.
 
JesuXPIPassio said:
I bet that explanation doesn’t work out right, like if we took the original Greek words. That explanation about the Word is one you’d probably find just within the Evangelical American Fundamentalists.
Click to expand...
not to mess things up here to much, but evangelicals and fundamentalists are not the same thing. Not all evangelicals are fundamentalists, is the way somebody explained it recently.
 
The most compelling interpretation of John 6 that I have heard is that it is NOT about the Eucharist at all but is a veiled affirmation by Christ of His Deity, in the same way that he affirms Himself to be living waters to the Samaritan woman a couple of chapters earlier. Christ in both cases is the Source of life. The notable thing is that the non-Jewish Samaritans received His self-revelation gladly, while Christ’s Jewish followers quibbled with his use of the simile and finally rejected Him. This is a pattern followed several times in the Gospel of John: it illustrates what the writer said in the first chapter: that He came to His own and His own received Him not.
 
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