Why wouldn't a Protestant want to receive the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist

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Peebo said:
Wow…in all my life I’ve never heard anyone…be they Protestant…Muslim…Jewish…Hindu…Buddhist…or even atheist…offer such a vile …disgusting comparison…
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I think the poster was being honest. There is nothing vile or disgusting about what was written. Intimacy, on a lot of levels, is difficult for many, many people. There is no shame in that. If the Eucharist isn’t meant to be intimate, I don’t know what is.
 
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Mishakel said:
As a Protestant we do not come to the same conclusion as Catholicism does when reading John 6. Catholicism believes Christ was being literal whereas we believe he was being figurative. Christ clarified what he meant for the disciples by saying “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing : the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life”
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Here is the problem with the term “protestant”.
Allow me to disagree with your conclusion.
Mishakel said:
Christ, when at the last supper passed out bread and said it was his body. He passed around the cup and said it was his blood. Again, Christ is being figurative. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the explanation of the last supper from the Catholic view so if someone can explain how that isn’t literal yet John 6 is, please explain the reasoning or mindset behind it.
Christ spoke both literal and figurative. He said he was the door. It’s not literally physically a door but spiritually and figuratively he is. He said he was the light of the world. Once again, he’s speaking spiritually and figuratively. He said he was the true vine. He doesn’t stop and explain to the disciples every time he’s being figurative but he did when speaking of his flesh.
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The Last Supper accounts are actually the literal. This is where I disagree with Catholics. They seem to use John 6 as justification for the doctrine of the real presence, and the Last Supper accounts as support. I see it the other way.
Christ is not speaking figuratively at the Last Supper. He say, “This is my body”, etc.
It is the reverse of “I am the way”, or any of the other “I am the…” statements. They are figurative. Not here. “This is my body…”
Mishakel said:
This is why as Protestants we would see no value in the Eucharist other than being symbolic.
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Use of the term ‘protestant’ when speaking of doctrine and practice is folly.
 
JonNC said:
Christ is not speaking figuratively at the Last Supper. He say, “This is my body”, etc.
It is the reverse of “I am the way”, or any of the other “I am the…” statements. They are figurative. Not here. “This is my body…”
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I have to ask: what hermeneutical principle do you use to determine that “I am the true vine” is figurative, while “This is my body” is not? A teacher holding an orange in his/her hand, saying “This is the sun”, is clearly speaking figuratively.
 
Johan said:
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JonNC:
Christ is not speaking figuratively at the Last Supper. He say, “This is my body”, etc.
It is the reverse of “I am the way”, or any of the other “I am the…” statements. They are figurative. Not here. “This is my body…”
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I have to ask: what hermeneutical principle do you use to determine that “I am the true vine” is figurative, while “This is my body” is not? A teacher holding an orange in his/her hand, saying “This is the sun”, is clearly speaking figuratively.
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They are reversed. “I am the vine” is a comparative. It is figurative.
“This is my body” is not a comparative. Further, He attaches a promise to the words of institution. Paul describes the consequence of not discerning, receiving unworthily.
The comparison of the words of institution and Christ’s metaphors just doesn’t stand.

Then, if one looks back at the history of the Church Catholic, east and west, there is little hermeneutics that defends a merely symbolic interpretation.

There are some communions that defend a symbolic interpretation. That’s their Choice. I’ll just say that the clear meaning of the verba, along with the historic hermeneutic of the Church recognizes Christ’s meaning as “is”.
 
DeniseNY said:
I"m late to this thread and I admit I haven’t read all the responses, but I find the premise a little odd. Why should they want to receive in a Catholic Church? They don’t believe the Eucharist truly is the body and blood of Christ.
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And those who do believe it is His true body and blood are already receiving it in their church.
 
steve-b said:
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Wannano:
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steve-b:
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Wannano:
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AtheistNoMore:
Hi everyone,

This question has been nagging me for a while about some Protestants’ attitudes toward the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. As many of us know, many Protestants believe the Eucharist is a mere symbol of Jesus, and not his actual body. Of course, us Catholics understand the Eucharist to be the actual body and blood of Jesus.

What I really want to know is, why wouldn’t a Protestant (or any Christian who doesn’t believe in the Real Presence) want to receive the physical body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist? The Eucharist is the most intimate and physical experience we have with the Lord. Why wouldn’t all Christians want this?
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How have you determined that we don’t want to? My understanding is that we can’t partake in your Eucharist if we really don’t believe the wafer has become Jesus. Shouldn’t we rather be respected for admitting we don’t have that belief? I read that only a small percentage of Catholics really believe yet they partake…which they can do because they have been baptized Catholic. Are they better off than a Protestant who admits he has not come to that belief?
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Georgetown Univ , A Jesuit University, did a survey, and found 79% of Catholics don’t attend Mass faithfully on Sunday. They might be (C& E) Christmas and/or Easter Catholics, or they stopped going to mass altogether but still call themselves Catholic.

Meaning 21% of Catholics faithfully go to mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation.

SO​

Depending on which group one asks faith questions to, one would expect to get different answers to those faith questions… agreed?
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I would think it logical but at the same time I have had the pleasure of conversing with numerous priests and find I get quite different answers to the same questions from time to time.
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by different answers, do they contradict?
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I see I have not replied to this…I want to be fair, but yes, usually a different answer brings an element of contradiction. Some have been a complete contradiction. I guess that is why I have been interested in various responses here on the forum. Quite often when a Catholic is concerned with their life, other Catholics encourage them to go see your priest as soon as possible. Then when someone is not satisfied with what the priest told them, they are encouraged to talk to a different priest.
 
Wannano said:
I see I have not replied to this…I want to be fair, but yes, usually a different answer brings an element of contradiction. Some have been a complete contradiction. I guess that is why I have been interested in various responses here on the forum. Quite often when a Catholic is concerned with their life, other Catholics encourage them to go see your priest as soon as possible. Then when someone is not satisfied with what the priest told them, they are encouraged to talk to a different priest.
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It is unfortunate, when answers between priests on faith and moral issues, might conflict. Because they shouldn’t conflict, they should be in accord with the Church…

Outside faith and moral issues, opinions can run the gamut.
 
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ltwin said:
The question is not one of wanting. The question is how are we to actually receive
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I appreciate your answer. I haven’t taken communion since around 2001 and do not feel I am in any way lacking in my faith journey. Our youngest son is married to a Salvation Army gal. They don’t do communion at all and seem like a healthy congregation.
 
AtheistNoMore said:
What I really want to know is, why wouldn’t a Protestant (or any Christian who doesn’t believe in the Real Presence) want to receive the physical body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist? The Eucharist is the most intimate and physical experience we have with the Lord. Why wouldn’t all Christians want this?
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Protestants don’t believe in the True Presence. They thus don’t want to engage in a fiction.

They are tragically wrong about the True Presence, and miss out on intimate encounter with Christ.
 
runningdude said:
Protestants don’t believe in the True Presence. They thus don’t want to engage in a fiction.
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Article X: Of the Lord’s Supper.
1] Of the Supper of the Lord they teach that the Body and Blood of Christ are truly present, and are distributed 2] to those who eat the Supper of the Lord; and they reject those that teach otherwise.
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> The Augsburg Confession

Regarding doctrine and practice, the use of the term “Protestant” is folly.
runningdude said:
They are tragically wrong about the True Presence, and miss out on intimate encounter with Christ.
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This is most certainly true.
 
From the Protestant POV of the Scriptures, despite the Greek word translated “Eucharist” in the NT, it never refers to the actual communion bread itself. It simply means a “thanksgiving” & a remembrance of what Jesus did for us on the cross, which is how Paul uses it in 1 Corinthians 11 when he commands the church to “remember” when they eat the bread & wine.

When it comes to Jesus’ words in John 6, he begins the passage by saying “he who comes to me will not hunger; he who believes in me will never thirst.” Jesus is speaking in spiritual terms here, as he says later “the flesh profits nothing, my words are of the spirit.” Plus, there is no indication that communion is taking place in John 6.

When Jesus says “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life,” elsewhere in John’s gospel, he uses these same words “eat” & “drink” in spiritual terms, such as with the Samaritan woman in John 4, and later in John 7.

Lastly, at the Last Supper when Jesus says “this IS my body,” elsewhere He says “the seed IS the word of God” (Luke 8:11). Clearly, Jesus isn’t being literal that the seed “transubstantiates” into the literal word of God. These are reasons why Protestants reject transubstantiation of the “Eucharist.”
 
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I have no dog in this fight, but I do find painting Protestants as purposefully unwilling to believe in the real presence as opposed to not being convinced a bit irksome.

Hopefully this analogy may help Catholics get a taste of why Protestants might not suspend their disbelief of the real presence despite the potential benefits of doing so:

Imagine there were a group of Christians who noted the references to God’s breath in the Bible (for example Genesis 2:5 which says, “The LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature”). Many years earlier they formed a ceremony where there would be a plate of lightly smoldering ashes, and a variation of transubstantiation is said to occur that turned that air into the literal breath of God himself.

Catholics and Protestants likely would not see truth in such a ceremony. And that’s the key: Catholics would not be convinced if this group said something to the effect of “Why wouldn’t a Catholic want to receive the very breath of life from the Lord God himself?”

This is NOT to denigrate those who believe in the real presence. Catholics have their reasons for believing in it while Protestants have their reasons not to. It’s when the question of the real presence is couched as saying Protestants aren’t willing to fully embrace their faith that it truly misunderstands the positions of Protestants.
 
RaisedCatholic said:
Lastly, at the Last Supper when Jesus says “this IS my body,” elsewhere He says “the seed IS the word of God” (Luke 8:11). Clearly, Jesus isn’t being literal that the seed “transubstantiates” into the literal word of God. These are reasons why Protestants reject transubstantiation of the “Eucharist.”
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Rejection of Transubstantiation should never result in the rejection of the truth of the real presence.
 
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