The Real Presence

[Richard_Kastner]

Because of the context in which Jesus taught us about his body and blood at the table with his Apostles. In our parish, we don’t not enter into a venue to worship the Eucharist. It is the elements of bread and wine offered up to God as he sends his blessing back down to us as the bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ. We partake in it just as Jesus did with his Apostles.

The purpose of the bread and wine in the Eucharist is to receive Christ’s very Body and Blood for the forgiveness of sins.

Do you think that Jesus needed to be forgiven of His sins?

 

[JonNC]

This is what I meant when I said that most Protestant Eucharistic views claim the “Real Presence” but still treat the Eucharist differently than if Jesus was right in front of them.

Really, Cat? Not the slightest bit judgemental, this?

Let me ask you, when at that very moment the priest is about to put His very body on you tongue or in your hand, and when the chalice with His true blood is about to touch your lips, are you kneeling in the very presence of the King of Kings, or are you standing?
You see, most Lutherans kneel at this most special moment in a Christian’s life. If you stand to receive, are you treating His presence differently?

My point is not to claim that we are more pious than you, or that we act better than you in His presence. My point is that how one treats His presence is more a matter of the heart and faith, than our varying piety. To that, I do not oppose Eucharistic Adoration, because I know that the Catholic Church teaches that the greatest omportance of the Body and Blood of Christ is, as He says, to eat and drink for the forgiveness of sins.

Jon

 

[JonNC]

Do you think that Jesus needed to be forgiven of His sins?

I’m a fifth grade teacher. I often model the things I want my students to learn.

Jon

 

[kylemccloughan]

This is what I meant when I said that most Protestant Eucharistic views claim the “Real Presence” but still treat the Eucharist differently than if Jesus was right in front of them.

I don’t think so. There’s nothing to say that I don’t believe that it truly is the body and blood of Christ just because my presence with the Lord is during communion and intercessory prayer and not in Eucharistic adoration. You are attempting to take God away from me and put him into your box where only you think that you can understand him by what you do and how you do it exclusively. It doesn’t work that way.

 

[GKC]

Really, Cat? Not the slightest bit judgemental, this?

Let me ask you, when at that very moment the priest is about to put His very body on you tongue or in your hand, and when the chalice with His true blood is about to touch your lips, are you kneeling in the very presence of the King of Kings, or are you standing?
You see, most Lutherans kneel at this most special moment in a Christian’s life. If you stand to receive, are you treating His presence differently?

My point is not to claim that we are more pious than you, or that we act better than you in His presence. My point is that how one treats His presence is more a matter of the heart and faith, than our varying piety. To that, I do not oppose Eucharistic Adoration, because I know that the Catholic Church teaches that the greatest omportance of the Body and Blood of Christ is, as He says, to eat and drink for the forgiveness of sins.

Jon

Adding a point: I’ve never received standing, in my life. Kneeling at the rail.

GKC

 

[JonNC]

Adding a point: I’ve never received standing, in my life. Kneeling at the rail.

GKC

In the Church where I was raised, there was no rail (just a step), and most received standing, while some kneeled. It was also the case that virtually all received on the tongue, not in the hand. Since I went off to college, I cannot recall ever receiving while standing, and now the practice is to receive in the hand.

Curious that, how Eucharistic piety changes. And yet, I do not see a change toward reverence in the presence of His body and blood, except maybe in a positive sense.

Jon

 

[Defender1]

The Lutheran Confessions condemn the teachings of the Anabaptist:

Erroneous Articles of the Anabaptists

9 We reject and condemn the erroneous and heretical teaching of the Anabaptists which cannot be suffered or tolerated in the churches or in the body politic or in domestic society. They teach:
10 1. That our righteousness before God does not depend alone on the sole obedience and merit of Christ but in renewal and in our own piety, in which we walk before God. But this piety rests for the greater part on their own peculiar precepts and self-chosen spirituality as on a kind of new monkery.
(tr-1099) 11 2. That unbaptized children are not sinners before God but righteous and innocent, and hence in their innocence they will be saved without Baptism, which they do not need. Thus they deny and reject the entire teaching of original sin and all that pertains thereto.
12 3. That children should not be baptized until they have achieved the use of reason and are able to make their own confession of faith.
13 4. That the children of Christians, because they are born of Christian and believing parents, are holy and children of God even without and prior to Baptism. Therefore they do not esteem infant Baptism very highly and do not advocate it, contrary to the express words of the promise which extends only to those who keep the covenant and do not despise it (Gen. 17:4–8, 19–21).
14 5. That that is no truly Christian assembly or congregation in the midst of which sinners are still found.
15 6. That one may not hear or attend on a sermon in those temples in which the papistic Mass had formerly been read.
16 7. That one is to have nothing to do with those ministers of the church who preach the Gospel according to the Augsburg Confession and censure the errors of the Anabaptists; neither may one serve them or work for them at all, but one is to flee and avoid them as people who pervert the Word of God.
17 8. That in the New Testament era government service is not a godly estate.
18 9. That no Christian can hold an office in the government with an inviolate conscience.
19 10. That no Christian may with an inviolate conscience use an office of the government against wicked persons as occasion may arise, nor may a subject call upon the government for help.
20 11. That a Christian cannot with a good conscience swear an oath before a court or pay oath-bound feudal homage to his prince or liege lord.
21 12. That the government cannot with an inviolate conscience impose the death penalty on evil-doers.
22 13. That no Christian can with a good conscience hold or possess private property but is obliged to give his property to the community.
23 14. That no Christian can with a good conscience be an innkeeper, a merchant, or a cutler.
24 15. That difference in faith is sufficient ground for married people to divorce each other, to go their separate ways, and to enter into a new marriage with another person of the same faith.
25 16. That Christ did not assume his flesh and blood from the virgin Mary but brought it along from heaven.
26 17. That Christ is not truly and essentially God but only possesses more and greater gifts and glory than other people.
(tr-1101) 27 They hold other similar articles. But they are divided into many parties among themselves, with one party holding more and another party holding fewer errors. The entire sect, however, can be characterized as basically nothing else than a new kind of monkery.

Tappert, Theodore G.: The Book of Concord : The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Philadelphia : Fortress Press, 2000, c1959, S. 633

Thank you for this info , I was not making any argument towards Luther here I was simply pointing out his baptist foundation .I pointed out what they claim and what it really is .

 

[GKC]

In the Church where I was raised, there was no rail (just a step), and most received standing, while some kneeled. It was also the case that virtually all received on the tongue, not in the hand. Since I went off to college, I cannot recall ever receiving while standing, and now the practice is to receive in the hand.

Curious that, how Eucharistic piety changes. And yet, I do not see a change toward reverence in the presence of His body and blood, except maybe in a positive sense.

Jon

The first time I received was in the hand. I learned a different mode, soon after.

GKC

 

[grasscutter]

I should have probably explained the reason for my question in the first place. It was actually less about receiving Communion and more about Jesus’ presence in the Eucharist. I’d just come back from my scheduled holy hour (perpetual adoration chapel) and it was, as always a peaceful and wonderful experience.

I’m going to be moving soon to a city that doesn’t have Perpetual Adoration and, while I’m immensely looking forward to the move, I’m feeling sad that I won’t have this weekly experience.

So, I guess I was wondering what and why other Christians believed about the Real Presence. However, in my ignorance, it hadn’t occurred to me that some do. Anyway, I wish everyone could experience the Presence of our Lord in this uniquely wonderful way.

Peace be with you!

 

[regression]

I’m going to be moving soon to a city that doesn’t have Perpetual Adoration and, while I’m immensely looking forward to the move, I’m feeling sad that I won’t have this weekly experience.

Good luck with your move. You could always speak to someone in your new parish about Perpetual Adoration, maybe others there would like to see that started there…

 

[patricius79]

well, it has been asked with a good bit of frequency (and often with the tone of, how could you be such a spiritual idiot so as to not believe in the real bodily presence)…but for a fellow Canuck I’ll be happy to respond. My reasons are:

a) I don’t think it is a teaching that goes back to the apostles (and therefore, obviously not back to Christ)…if you are interested I’ll be happy to provide the Titles of some scholarly works that support my position;

b) the bread remains bread and the wine remains wine…no scholarly works needed in support of this position as any one with the senses of sight, touch, smell/or and taste can easily verify the matter and I find the philosophy used to support the inconsistency (between what is observed and what is claimed) to be more than seriously lacking; and

c) the efforts to support the claim of a real bodily presence from scripture (IMHO) are flawed and do not overcome the obvious fact that Jesus was speaking figuratively when he likely said (probably in Aramaic), “This - my body”

If this thread takes the normal course, a number of conservative Catholics will:

a) post a bunch of snippets from the ECFs in response to #1 above…typically with no accompanying analysis and as if the scholars that I can marshall in support of my view somehow forgot to read those snippets;

b) claim that I am calling Jesus a liar for not disbelieving my eyes and believing “is” means “is” or claim that I must be saying that God isn’t powerful enough to make bread into his body whilst still leaving the “accidents” of the bread in place; and/or

c) claim that various passages (the 3 institution passages, John 6 and 1 Cor 10 and 11) must be interpreted to verify a real bodily presence even though extremely learned scholars do not agree with that assertion.

That said, if you want to undertsand why I believe what I believe, I am happy to answer your questions

I’m not going to accuse you of anything.

this quotation from the well-respected Protestant historian JND Kelly came to mind:

*JND Kelly’s Summary of the Ante-Nicene Fathers

“…the eucharist was regarded as the distinctively Christian SACRIFICE from the closing decade of the first century, if not earlier. Malachi’s prediction (1,10f) that the Lord would reject the Jewish sacrifices and instead would have ‘a pure offering’ made to Him by the Gentiles in every place was early seized upon by Christians [Did 14,3; Justin dial 41,2f; Irenaeus ad haer 4,17,5] as a prophecy of the eucharist…It was natural for early Christians to think of the eucharist as a sacrifice. The fulfillment of prophecy demanded a solemn Christian offering, and the rite itself was wrapped in the sacrificial atmosphere with which our Lord invested the Last Supper…Ignatius roundly declares [Smyrn 6,2] that ‘the eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins and which the Father in His goodness raised’. The bread is the flesh of Jesus, the cup His blood [Rom 7,3]. CLEARLY he intends this realism to be taken STRICTLY, for he makes it the basis of his argument against the Docetists’ DENIAL of the REALITY of Christ’s body…Justin actually refers to the CHANGE [1 Apol 66,2]…So Irenaeus teaches [Haer 4,17,5; 4,18,4; 5,2,3] that the bread and wine are REALLY the Lord’s body and blood. His witness is, indeed, all the more IMPRESSIVE because he produces it quite incidentally while refuting the Gnostic and Docetic REJECTION of the Lord’s real humanity. Like Justin, too, he seems to postulate a CHANGE [Haer 4,18,5]…The eucharist was also, of course, the great act of worship of Christians, their SACRIFICE. The writers and liturgies of the period are UNANIMOUS in recognizing it as such.” (Early Christian Doctrines, page 196-198, 214 emphasis added)*
philvaz.com/apologetics/num8.htm

 

[grasscutter]

Good luck with your move. You could always speak to someone in your new parish about Perpetual Adoration, maybe others there would like to see that started there…

Thank you! I’m excited about moving and I hope it goes smoothly. And thank you for your suggestion. I know, that in a nearby city they have a Perpetual Adoration Chapel, but the distance would probably be prohibitive to a lot of people in my new city. I’m not an organizing type of person, but I have enthusiasm for this and maybe I will meet the type of people who can implement it.

Sometimes it just takes someone to offer an idea…

 

[Nicea325]

If this thread takes the normal course, a number of conservative Catholics will:

a) post a bunch of snippets from the ECFs in response to #1 above…typically with no accompanying analysis and as if the scholars that I can marshall in support of my view somehow forgot to read those snippets;

Please! The above is just plain weak,desperate and disingenious! Anyone who believes the above statement has to be blind. It is a flat out lie! Typical response of many Protestant apologists (White,etc,etc).

 

[Nicea325]

I’m not going to accuse you of anything.

this quotation from the well-respected Protestant historian JND Kelly came to mind:

*JND Kelly’s Summary of the Ante-Nicene Fathers

“…the eucharist was regarded as the distinctively Christian SACRIFICE from the closing decade of the first century, if not earlier. Malachi’s prediction (1,10f) that the Lord would reject the Jewish sacrifices and instead would have ‘a pure offering’ made to Him by the Gentiles in every place was early seized upon by Christians [Did 14,3; Justin dial 41,2f; Irenaeus ad haer 4,17,5] as a prophecy of the eucharist…It was natural for early Christians to think of the eucharist as a sacrifice. The fulfillment of prophecy demanded a solemn Christian offering, and the rite itself was wrapped in the sacrificial atmosphere with which our Lord invested the Last Supper…Ignatius roundly declares [Smyrn 6,2] that ‘the eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins and which the Father in His goodness raised’. The bread is the flesh of Jesus, the cup His blood [Rom 7,3]. CLEARLY he intends this realism to be taken STRICTLY, for he makes it the basis of his argument against the Docetists’ DENIAL of the REALITY of Christ’s body…Justin actually refers to the CHANGE [1 Apol 66,2]…So Irenaeus teaches [Haer 4,17,5; 4,18,4; 5,2,3] that the bread and wine are REALLY the Lord’s body and blood. His witness is, indeed, all the more IMPRESSIVE because he produces it quite incidentally while refuting the Gnostic and Docetic REJECTION of the Lord’s real humanity. Like Justin, too, he seems to postulate a CHANGE [Haer 4,18,5]…The eucharist was also, of course, the great act of worship of Christians, their SACRIFICE. The writers and liturgies of the period are UNANIMOUS in recognizing it as such.” (Early Christian Doctrines, page 196-198, 214 emphasis added)*
philvaz.com/apologetics/num8.htm

Radical will ignore it.

I am curious to know wy Radical has not provided me scores of writings/works from the ECF’s cleary teaching the RP of the Eucharist is one big flat lie and a heresy? As of today,Radical has not provided ONE ECF explicitly discussing the heretical teaching of the RP?

 

[Cat_Herder]

Let me ask you, when at that very moment the priest is about to put His very body on you tongue or in your hand, and when the chalice with His true blood is about to touch your lips, are you kneeling in the very presence of the King of Kings, or are you standing?
You see, most Lutherans kneel at this most special moment in a Christian’s life. If you stand to receive, are you treating His presence differently?

I am not asking about your body posture. I am asking about your interior disposition.

Kneeling when receiving Communion is not proof that one worships the Eucharist. Everyone kneels when they pray whether or not they happen to be recieving Communion at the time. On top of that, many Protestants who do NOT accept the Real Presence kneel during their communion rite.

I don’t think so. There’s nothing to say that I don’t believe that it truly is the body and blood of Christ just because my presence with the Lord is during communion and intercessory prayer and not in Eucharistic adoration.

So what does your church do with the leftover elements from your communion rite?

If your church throws throw them away, feed them to animals or give them to poor people then your church is treating these elements as common food, not the Body of Christ. If you truly believed that those elements were the Body of Christ then why aren’t you doing anything about it?

 

[Cheshangle]

I am not asking about your body posture. I am asking about your interior disposition.

Kneeling when receiving Communion is not proof that one worships the Eucharist. Everyone kneels when they pray whether or not they happen to be recieving Communion at the time. On top of that, many Protestants who do NOT accept the Real Presence kneel during their communion rite.

So what does your church do with the leftover elements from your communion rite?

If your church throws throw them away, feed them to animals or give them to poor people then your church is treating these elements as common food, not the Body of Christ. If you truly believed that those elements were the Body of Christ then why aren’t you doing anything about it?

In the Anglican communion the leftover elements are never thrown away or otherwise disposed of. They are not common food; they are the body and blood of Christ.

I can remember that after a service in the Church of Ireland the priest asked me to help her finish the wine that remained (which I did) because she had to drive home.

 

[GKC]

In the Anglican communion the leftover elements are never thrown away or otherwise disposed of. They are not common food; they are the body and blood of Christ.

I can remember that after a service in the Church of Ireland the priest asked me to help her finish the wine that remained (which I did) because she had to drive home.

My son in law (ordained deacon) used to remark that it was a good thing he was rather large and sturdy, since he was called to consume the Holy Blood remaining, regularly.

GKC

 

[Radical]

I’m not going to accuse you of anything.

this quotation from the well-respected Protestant historian JND Kelly came to mind:

JND Kelly’s Summary of the Ante-Nicene Fathers

“…the eucharist was regarded as the distinctively Christian SACRIFICE …The eucharist was also, of course, the great act of worship of Christians, their SACRIFICE. The writers and liturgies of the period are UNANIMOUS in recognizing it as such.” (Early Christian Doctrines, page 196-198, 214 emphasis added)

really?..You walk about with this sort of quotation filling your mind? In any event, four things wrt JND Kelly. First, why do Catholics here always label him “Protestant”? Is it that you believe that Kelly came from a communion that denied a real bodily presence so that you think that your quote represents an admission that Kelly would have preferred not to make? Second, although JND Kelly was a great historian, his stuff is getting a little dated…(the words in your quote were likely written before you were born). Third, I suspect that you think that the quote is far more supportive of your view than it actually is…for example, in Hebrews 13: 15-16 it reads: * Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise–the fruit of lips that confess his name. And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased (NIV) *. Obviously then, by God’s standards (and hopefully the standards of the ECFs) a real bodily presence is not required for a sacrifice… Fourth, here is what I posted earlier in the thread from some other renowned and more current scholars:

Pelikan, in his first volume of *The Christian Tradition * wrote:

Yet it does seem ‘express and clear’ that no orthodox father of the second or third century of whom we have record declared the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist to be no more than symbolic (although Clement and Origen came close to doing so) or specified a process of substantial change by which the presence was effected (although Ignatius and Justin came close to doing so). Within the limits of those excluded extremes was the doctrine of the real presence .

So here we have a very respected and established scholar who understood that early Eucharistic views were very diverse with one extreme being close to a purely symbolic view. What does one need to believe in order to hold to something which is just less than a purely symbolic view? Is it that the bread is viewed as a symbol, but that it is understood that the symbol and the act possess the power to unify the participants in the body of Christ (aka the church)?

F. van der Meer, in his renowned study Augustine the Bishop, wrote (about Augustine):

It is perfectly true, however, that there is nowhere any indication of any awareness of the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament, or that he thought very much about this subject or made it the object of devotion; that was alien to the people of that age – at any rate in the West.

If Pelikan and van der Meer are correct, then it would seem that Africa (from Alexandria to Carthage), to a large degree, wasn’t on board with this real bodily presence stuff. Now if a RBP mass was always the centre piece of Christian worship form Christ onwards, it is rather odd that the earliest ECFs weren’t all on board. As we learn more and more about the earliest church it becomes clearer that a considerable variety existed amongst the orthodox wrt things such as the Eucharist. That variety is consistent with the RP view as being a product of the imagination of the pious. Nicea325, who commented on your post doesn’t seem to get what I am saying. I don’t expect to find evidence of a big blow-up amongst the ECFs wrt the introduction of a RBP. Kilmartin sees the Antiochene school of the 4th century as the place where the real somatic presence got its real start. It seems that what happened is that Christianity was introduced into a culture that was accustomed to sacrifices and rites. It was hard for them to believe that Christianity could be as straight forward and ritual free as Christ made it and so in ruminating on Christ’s words the layers of meaning (that they perceived) gradually piled up so that what was a fellowship meal became a ritualistic mass with, at first, a real presence and then a real bodily presence. If you look at the works of the ECFs you see how the doctrines wrt the Eucharist grow ever more detailed. Augustine wrote sermon after sermon on the Eucharist, but as Garry Wills noted (another Augustine biographer) “in all of Augustine’s hundreds of sermons delivered at the eucharistic meal, ‘he does not speak of a real presence’ in the bread and wine.” Nicea325, if he stays true to form will dismiss the scholars that I have quoted here (all Catholics BTW) as revisionists and ask that I produce something that I don’t think exists (and that he can’t show must exist). As I said before on this thread, the diversity (seen by Pelikan) and the absence (seen by van der Meer and Wills) sure would be odd things if a Real Bodily Presence was taught from the outset, but would be rather expected if the ECFs were prepared to allow themselves the opportunity to suggest various ideas (some innovative, some not) and to build upon those ideas to come to a consensus. Kelly would have clasified that building as a “development” whereas I believe it goes much beyond a mere development.

 

[Cat_Herder]

In the Anglican communion the leftover elements are never thrown away or otherwise disposed of. They are not common food; they are the body and blood of Christ.

If that’s the case in your church, you are one of the lucky ones (as is GKC). This is what they do in other Anglican churches.

I can remember that after a service in the Church of Ireland the priest asked me to help ***her ***finish the wine that remained (which I did) because she had to drive home.

First communion for dogs, and now pristesses… :bigyikes: But that’s another topic.

The fact that you’re calling it “wine” says all we need to know.

 

[JonNC]

=Cat Herder;8125828]I am not asking about your body posture. I am asking about your interior disposition.

Kneeling when receiving Communion is not proof that one worships the Eucharist.

You are exactly right, and neither is going to a Perpetual Adoration Chapel, necessarily.

Everyone kneels when they pray whether or not they happen to be recieving Communion at the time. On top of that, many Protestants who do NOT accept the Real Presence kneel during their communion rite.

Indeed, some don’t. Since I’m not one of those, I can’t speak for them, anymore than you can.

So what does your church do with the leftover elements from your communion rite?

We consume what we can, reserve what we must for later distribution to the sick and shut-in. Following the practices of the Church, what must be disposed of is reverently returned to the ground.

Jon