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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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