Doc Holliday said:
BusyTarpDuster2017 said:
Doc Holliday said:
BusyTarpDuster2017 said:
Doc Holliday said:
Mothra said:
Doc Holliday said:
historian said:
It is silly to think the Lord God advocated a form of cannibalism! It makes much more sense to realize that Christ was speaking metaphorically when he said in the same way He was never literally a door, a vine, or a letter of the Greek alphabet. Likewise He was never a shepherd in the literal sense (but did fulfill OT prophecy) or a physician.
Several disciples left after He taught that they must eat His flesh and drink His blood to have eternal life. They found this teaching too difficult to accept, calling it a "hard saying", resulting in a mass departure of followers.
The general instruction appears twice, but the Gospel of John records Jesus repeating the concept at least six times within a single discourse to emphasize its importance. Now, if you're a disciple listening to Jesus, and you were arguing among yourselves about whether He was being literal, and this was His response what would you say? Would this clarify that He is being metaphorical?
Why would they act like that if it was just a metaphor and symbolic?
Some protestants (Lutherans) believe its a sacrament. Its only in the past couple of hundred years that people gradually started seeing it as symbolic and of not much importance. Many denominations barely even practice it.
Even if you think its symbolic, there's something very wrong with juice/cracker and then throwing it in the trash on the way out. If its only supposed to be symbolic...then discarding it in the trash is also symbolic.
Reiterating its importance, and saying that the bread and wine literally become Christ's flesh and blood, are two very different things.
I get that to you it's lost its holiness and symbolism (which seems to motivate a lot of your posts on religious topics), but that is quite a different thing than literally believing you are eating literal flesh and blood - an idea that simply isn't supported in scripture.
Both of our views are supported by scripture. It can be argued from the text in multiple ways because it doesn't explicitly say "Its symbolic" nor does it say "its literal". Scripture is also even more difficult than just specific verses, its how it harmonizes with the rest of the bible, what the cultural context was etc.
We're both engaging in hermeneutics and we're relying on an authority to dictate the truth.
Many Protestants disagree with you and claim the exact same thing you did "that other views aren't supported in scripture".
You're relying on later reformed doctrine that is schismatic from mainline Protestantism and I'm relying on Orthodox.
If the disciples understood Jesus to be talking literally - why then would they instruct Gentile believers to abstain from blood?
If you believe Jesus was being literal, then do you believe that one MUST eat his flesh in order to be saved? Wouldn't that mean, then, that despite what one believes, salvation is entirely dependent on eating a piece of bread and drinking wine from communion/the Eucharist? Do you really think that's the gospel?
The command in Acts 15 is about ordinary animal blood, not sacramental participation in Christ. You've got gentiles eating with Jews who had Torah dietary conscience. Eating blood publicly would destroy unity in the Church.
Baptism now saves you (1 Peter 3:21)
We are buried with Christ through baptism (Romans 6)
The bread is a participation (koinonia) in Christ's body (1 Corinthians 10:16)
These arent legal declarations. You're reading first century Christianity through later juridical and nominal categories.
The apostles were not making legal declarations about status before God. They were describing participation in divine life.
The ancient world did not separate symbol from reality the way modern nominalism does. This is a ancient vs modern mindset issue. Have you ever looked into this? It's a big deal, not something you can just brush off.
Ex. In the Roman world, offering incense before the emperor's statue was not seen as honoring a representation. It was honoring the emperor himself. Treaties were sealed with sacrificed animals because participants believed they mystically entered the covenant fate.
This kind of cultural assumption already existed. You have to read and understand it thought that lens. Not a different paradigm that shows up 1400+ years later.
The command in Acts does not limit it only to animal blood. They just say "blood". You're adding to their words. If eating the literal blood of Jesus was the absolute requirement of salvation (what you MUST believe if you believe in the literal interpretation), then it would behoove the apostles to make that very, very important distinction when making that command to the Gentile believers so as not to create any eternal life-altering confusion.
How can "baptism now save you", when the literal intepretation of John 6 shows that literal eating Jesus' flesh and drinking his blood is what saves you, and nothing else? You never answered this, as I've asked this repeatedly. Otherwise, you're calling Jesus a liar, when he says eating his flesh is a MUST for salvation, and that NOT eating him means "you have no life within you".
You would think that, given the absolute requirement of the practice of eating Jesus flesh for salvation, that it would have been declared in explicit terms throughout the New Testament. You would think that Peter and Paul would have mentioned it when they were asked how to be saved. You would think that the house of Cornelius, even after having been indwelled by the Holy Spirit and being water baptized, that the point would have been made that they still needed to eat literally Jesus' flesh and drink his blood, otherwise they weren't saved.
Your literal interpretation has a tremendous amount of problems. Instead of understanding it the way that Augustine said to understand it, that is, figuratively, you are left trying to scramble and twist yourself in order to keep your literal understanding. I can keep adding to your dilemma, like the thief on the cross, and how Judas Iscariot, who "ate Jesus' flesh" in the Last Supper yet who wasn't saved. It's just so obvious that Jesus' words weren't literal and that's consistent with the whole of Scripture. For God's sakes, man, Jesus himself even explained that it wasn't literal, that it was spiritual!
By the way... you agree that the symbolic interpretation is NOT a "new invention" of Protestantism, don't you?
The dilemma you're raising only works if the Eucharist is understood either as crude literal cannibalism or as mere symbolism. It's not strictly either, it's participation in Christ.
When Jesus speaks in John 6, He's not talking about chewing biological tissue. He's speaking about participation in His life. That's why He immediately says, "It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh profits nothing."
Scripture never presents salvation as a single isolated moment. The New Testament consistently speaks of one reality from multiple angles: we are saved through faith, baptized into Christ, born of water and Spirit, united to His body, nourished by His flesh and blood. These are not rival requirements.
Around AD 107, Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of the apostle John, wrote on his way to martyrdom that those who deny the Eucharist as the flesh of Christ separate themselves from the Church. This isn't a medieval development. This is within living memory of the apostles.
If the apostles taught communion as merely symbolic, how did a direct student of John speak this strongly, this early, and without controversy from the wider Church?
Either Ignatius fundamentally misunderstood apostolic Christianity only a few years after the apostles, or the early Church understood the Eucharist as real participation in Christ from the beginning.
Ive never understood basing one's faith on thief on the cross, an example of the least common denominator possible. Protestants bring it up all the time as their forever get out of jail free card.
Catholic catechism of Course acknowledges that even someone that puts a bullet in their own head, can make it to Heaven. Wouldn't recommend that is how one lives their life, but God works in mysterious ways and all is possible with God.
