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I'd be very curious to read your view on the Eucharist. I haven't read much about it, but am definitely impressed by the sheer symbolic weight of the ritual.
I'm one of those knuckle-dragging, science-denying, embarrassment to the family Neanderthals that believes transubstantiation and that the consecrated Host really is the body and blood of Christ.
Cue Flannery O'Connor: "If it's a symbol, then I say to Hell with it"
It's not a symbol, it's not a birthday party, when the words "This is my Body" are said, it truly becomes the body of Christ. I'm irredeemable, I'm deplorable, I'm mired in peasant superstition 😁
What does this mean? I hear Catholics saying it all the time, but they’re just guessing the magisterium’s password. The Council of Trent said it, so you say it. If you take the literal phrase, “when the words ‘This is my Body’ are said, it truly becomes the body of Christ,” and interpret it using the norms of 21st century English, one would come to the conclusion that if you take a consecrated host, grind it up, and run a polymerase chain reaction on it, you’d end up with a vial full of Jesus DNA instead of grain DNA. Someone has claimed to have done this experiment. Maybe you think such trivialities are missing the point. I invite you to tell me, what is the point? Does the process of transsubstantiation change the host on the molecular level? the subatomic level? the quantum field level? If there are no physical effects, then in what way is this not a purely spiritual change?
Pardon me for laughing, but yes, I do. Anyone who got their hands on a consecrated Host and did this is engaging in (technical) blasphemy (see our good old pal PZ Myers), and if they managed to get an unconsecrated host, it wouldn't be any different than ordinary bread. But even back when I was younger (not dumber since I've never been very smart) I knew that putting the consecrated wine through a HPLC machine wouldn't show anything up, and it wasn't meant to do so. There's little other testing of the sort that science (or perhaps I should say instead, Science!) does; take the notion of testing if someone is in love by measuring hormone levels and so forth. You could indeed do it, but I think most people wouldn't find it a very satisfactory way of determining the question.
To quote Chesterton:
Next point:
The theology has been much argued about, and the formal language is an effort to use Aristotelian logical terms of the time. Luther, for instance, didn't like such because he felt it wasn't mystical enough, and his attempt at a formulation wasn't much better, as the fall-out between the Reformers over what was going on and was it a sacrament or only an ordnance and so forth demonstrated.
I can only give you the unsatisfactory "the accidents remain the same, the essence changes". It's certainly much easier and seems much more sensible to regard it as a ceremony or a symbol, and if you really need to be mystical about it that something 'spiritual' happens to the recipient who takes it in faith.
But that's not good enough. Yes, I know it sounds crazy and ignorant and science-denying and superstitious and all the rest of it. But if you strip the mystical out of religion, why are you even bothering with a religion? You just want - and end up with - a nice, polite, New England Transcendentalist debating society and ethics club.
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I’m not Catholic, don’t know one whit of Catholic theology, and what I am about to say is therefore pulled directly out of my ass. But one possibility — to me — is that when the Eucharist is consecrated, Jesus consciously experiences sense data through Eucharist in some way analogous to how normal humans experience sense data through their bodies. So when you touch the Eucharist, Jesus feels it as if you’re touching his body. This concludes my exercise in developing what is most likely a new brand of heresy.
I’ve dabbled myself in theorizing about whether pantheism is a valid subset of omnipresence, so this didn’t come across as heretical so much as edge-case theoretical.
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It's based on Ancient Greek philosophy that was ignorant of all of modern physics and chemistry. There is no point trying to analyze it rationally it is an attempt by smart, but ignorant, people to make sense of an irrational dogma. At some point you have to just give up. The Christians, Buddhists, Muslims or whoever will just make up knew more elaborate excuses on command. They have the truth of their dogma as a fixed prior and can always reason around any objection to it's truth.
Acerbic but pithy summation! 😀
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I think context of Jesus and his disciples as Jews needs to be considered too. Ancient Jewish laws on blood follow strict guidelines (you cannot consume the blood of an animal or you become like an animal) and figure prominently in covenants (the blood of Abraham lives on in his descendants). So when Jesus says these words at the last supper, he is initiating a new covenant on the basis of his blood. So even though it has the appearance of ordinary wine, spiritually it must be transformed into the blood of Jesus to be part of this new covenant with God.
So when these words and this ritual are repeated (Do this in memory of me), this new covenant of Jesus continues.
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I'm pretty sure that this isn't the ordinary belief. I know Aquinas, at least, thought that Jesus was substantially, but not locally present.
I think they have to believe that the whole Christ is in every part of it.
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No need to beat yourself up so much. It’s perfectly legitimate to believe the Eucharist to be Christ’s literal blood and body. Many modern ‘rational materialists’ believe things just as ridiculous on their face, like the Big Bang or the origins of life.
We silly materialists also “believe in” things like quantum theory which, to quote Feynman:
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Theory of expansion of universe was formulated by Catholic priest and met, at first, with very strong opposition from "rational materialists" who saw it being too similar to biblical story of creation.
"Big Bang" name itself was coined as derogatory nickname.
Nevertheless, rational people, whether materialists or idealists, accepted it because the evidence is overwhelming.
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The point of the Eucharist is that it's not symbolic. Filthy Protestants like me think that the bread and wine are merely symbolic reminders of Christ's physical sacrifice. But for actual Catholics, partaking in the Eucharist means eating Jesus' actual body and drinking his actual blood, and it's kind of a big deal.
Well, following the Calvinist/Reformed view, I'm kind of in both boats, in that I think that we are actually nourished with Christ's body and blood in the Lord's Supper, but not that the bread and wine are Christ.
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Some Protestants (mainly Anglo-Catholics and Lutherans) also hold to the real presence. Luther himself once said he’d rather drink blood with the pope than wine with Zwingli (a rival reformer who rejected the real presence).
Technically speaking Lutherans and high anglicans believe in consubstantiation where the body of Christ is present in the bread of the Eucharist, and Catholics believe in transubstantiation where the Eucharist is no longer bread but is the literal flesh and blood of Jesus under the appearances of bread and wine(yes, the Eucharistic host is literally both body and blood, it’s a condemned error to hold that only the flesh and not the blood is the substance of the host).
If we’re getting technical, Lutherans actually reject consubstantiation for much the same reason they reject transubstantiation. In their view, both are attempts to cram the square peg of New Testament theology into the round hole of Aristotelian philosophy. Instead, they profess belief in a “sacramental union,” which basically takes the stereotypical Eastern Orthodox approach and declares the mode of the real presence to be a mystery. Some Anglo-Catholics have an almost identical theology, while others (notably including many of the Tractarians) profess(ed) belief in consubstantiation.
Either way, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and some Anglicans all share a belief in the real presence, even if they don’t agree on the precise method whereby it happens.
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It can have multiple dimensions to it, being both 100% true and also 100% symbolic, just like Christ is 100% Man and 100% God (it’s a mystery, duh).
I like to think how this worked for the early church: by requiring the believers to believe it is truly the flesh of a man, you are forcing them to commit to a shared social taboo (cannibalism), which works as a strong signal of commitment to the brotherhood and also as an emotionally-powerful way to bond together. It’s noteworthy that cannibalism is a charge against the early Christians, not because they ate the flesh of any man besides Christ, but likely because they refused to deny the charge in reference to this mysterious but real body of Christ. You can make a parallel to early metalhead culture where the bands would have grotesque names and the shirts had grotesque imagery; it creates a strong tight knit affiliation specifically against popular norms. If I recall some Buddhists did something similar but I’m too lazy to look. Another thing you’re doing is testing the initiate’s faith, whether they can see physical bread yet truly believe it is physical flesh, and whether they love God enough to engage in the taboo. So the “literalism” serves a neat psychological purpose. If I had a church I would over-emphasize the cannibalism dimension, maybe even styling the bread as flesh and the wine as blood.
Symbolically it’s rich. For one, breaking bread was the way social connections were formed in the ancient world, shared meals. So Christ is the shared central bond of the community. Bread is the staple crop that contained all necessary nutrients. (When Christ says “man cannot live on bread alone, but every word of God”, he is counterintuitively alluding to the fact that man can physically live on bread alone, and then creating an association between Word and Bread which the discerning reader ought to notice). So bread was had by everyone, signaling the commonality of God to every man. That the bread is eaten is a metaphor for the sacrifice of Christ (which nourishes), and thus becomes a standard for the community sort of like in the book the Giving Tree. There’s an interesting juxtaposition between Christ’s cannibalism where he allows himself to be eaten, and the cannibalism charge against the Pharisees, who “devour widows” — theirs is a cannibalism of self-gain against the poorest members. Blood in the ancient world was considered a kind of life force and elixir, so associating Christ’s blood with wine is also telling, saying that Christ’s life force is conviviality and mirth (the effects of alcohol). And then of course it relates to the miracle of the loaves and (mysteriously) the parables on farming…
Gorsh, those clever priest-types and their innate understanding of human psychology! That Jesus guy really was smart social scientist with His knowledge of taboos, huh? Didn't work on them all, but enough of them were big enough rubes to be fooled and stick around:
The passage isn't about the Lord's Supper. You had people like Cajetan (the preeminent Thomist, maybe ever, though Thomas himself did not agree) acknowledge this (Four Lutheran Errors, 1531. Six years earlier he thought that it was about the Eucharist, but he changed his mind.).
I have an enormous email chain that I was a part of, where I laid a lot of this out, if you like.
Some of the major points:
John 6:35 sets up a correspondence between believing in him and feeding on him as the bread of life. You can see this repeated when you compare verses 40 or 46 and verse 53, or 47 and 54, and more similar comparisons. It makes sense, then, to interpret this passage as referring to his feeding us through faith, and many throughout church history have recognized as much.
The manna comparison leads to some difficulties when connected with 1 Corinthians 10: he seems to be pushing there manna as sufficiently equivalent to the sacraments, which demands interpretation in light of the distinction to be found in John 6, namely that, I don't think he's talking about sacraments in John 6, but something stronger still.
Following that point, the language of John 6 is too strong, saying that anyone who eats of it has eternal life (in the present), and will live forever (unlike the fathers, who ate manna, who, note, many of them are living forever). See also how in verse 39, there's the reference that no one would be lost. Now, that isn't strictly said there referring to the Eucharist, but given the parallels of language, and the guarantee of resurrection in verse 54, that seems not unreasonable to carry over. But many who partake of the Eucharist do not have eternal life (e.g. those who partake unworthily), and many of those do not end up in heaven.
I'm sure there were other arguments I've made at some point or another. John 6:63 need to be dealt with, for example, but I haven't looked at that adequately to know what I make of it.
I see you in another comment mention that the church believed this for 1500 years. That is somewhat of an exaggeration. There were earlier precedents of disagreement on the matter of the eucharist. Berengar of Tours is famous, Ratramnus of Corbie was earlier, and the resurfacing of his writings played were influential in the English reformation, quite possibly John Scotus Eriugena, and Augustine himself seems not to believed in the real presence, exactly, either (and Calvin thought he was following Augustine).
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I am familiar with the text. Which part of it are you using in the implied disagreement? Unless I am misreading the sarcasm.
Notice how immediately after telling them to eat the flesh to obtain eternal life, he clarifies that the flesh is no use and that it is spirit which gives life, and that the words spoken are spirit. That’s not words spoken in this discourse exclusively, that’s all the words that Christ speaks, hence why the apostles say “you have the words of eternal life” and not “you have the flesh and blood of eternal life”. (Cf “God is spirit and must be worshipped in spirit”.) In my comment I mention how Jesus specifically sets up an association between bread and the word of God during the temptation. For what purpose would Jesus say “eat this flesh for eternal life”, and then in explaining the saying, say “the flesh is no help, the spirit gives life”? This would be nonsensical and contradictory from a strict literalist. But instead there’s a point that he is getting at. Throughout the epistles, “the spirit” is contrasted with two things: the letter and the flesh. Eg the letter kills and the spirit gives life, the flesh avails nothing, etc. That’s because spirit is meaning and significance and understanding; flesh and “letter” are the external appearances of what actually matters which should not be actual spiritual focus.
I don’t think there’s any “innate understanding of psychology”; it’s not as if there weren’t priests and centers of learning in the ancient world. But if you’re a strict literalist I would ask how you interpret such passages as “I come in the sign of Jonah” and “just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up”.
Look, I shouldn't even be let cast my shadow on this place, I'm so distant from rationalism (in religion).
I'm not convinced by proof-texting, especially from denominations which hammer home that every word must be taken literally - except this one bit here, and there, and whatever the Catholics say.
It's entirely possible the Church was mistaken on this for fifteen hundred years until Zwingli and Calvin came along to set us straight that "ha ha, no, it's only bread!" but I'm not Reformed or Calvinist, so I'll stay bogged down here in the mire of Papist idolatry of the bread-god.
You are an i-dough-lator!
insert Basil Brush boom-boom! here
🤣
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Thanks for the explanation. I mean, I tend to agree with mister @coffee_enjoyer that the symbolic impacts of the Eucharist can be discussed and thought of alongside the literal reality.
I have come to believe in the divinity of Christ, and the Eucharist being the literal flesh and blood of Him as well. That being said, the symbolic interpretations were crucial to my understanding of Christianity while I was still early on in the conversion process, and I find symbolic or allegorical readings of Christian Truth fascinating still.
I understand that many atheists and rationalists use the symbolic interpretation as a bludgeon against true believers, but I don’t see why Jesus couldn’t be the Son of God and just have an inherent mastery of symbolism. If He is divine, it would stand to reason his actions and decisions would be packed full of meaning. The tradition of symbolically reading scripture came out of the church, after all. Even the early Christians did it if I remember correctly.
Anyway, what’s the problem with having both the literal flesh and blood while still acknowledging there are symbolic resonances?
I don't know that I've heard Catholics and similar deny this.
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As Flannery O'Connor said-
"If it's just a symbol, then to Hell with it"
Which is a bad sentiment. If you turn out to be incorrect, that is no reason to have contempt for a sacrament that Christ himself instituted.
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