Shadow of an apostle falls on sick people and instantly cures them (Acts 5:15)
Water turns into top-shelf wine (John 2)
Looking at a bronze snake on a pole heals deadly snakebites (Numbers 21)
Touching a holy box literally zaps you like a power grid (2 Samuel 6)
Anointing oil, muddy spit, and prayer clothes actually heal people (Mark 6:13, John 9:6, Acts 19:12)

God doing anything noticeable to physical reality in 2026? Spiritual boundary violation.

At least Mainline traditions retain a meaningful view of the Sacraments as actual means of grace. What makes Zwinglian memorialism so absurd is that it defines its entire theology in opposition to Rome and Orthodoxy, stripping physical reality of its spiritual power just to ensure it doesn't look 'too Catholic.

No, BYD, you are wrong, again. And, I don't think I am the only one who gets a bit tired at your repeated efforts to parse, twist, cherry pick, deflect, harass, and/or resort to vitriol in efforts to put yourself in a position where you can stay on your throne and look down on your minions.

So, is it, that although you have &/or have access to extensive religious knowledge, you get a little bit nervous/scared, when you either find yourself being articulately challenged and/or find that someone made a statement which directly challenges one of your core beliefs?

For some of us, such forums as this one, offer us the opportunity to state our opinions and discuss them with others who agree/disagree, but not with the enjoyment you get blasting us so often, and of course your vitriol leaves many with a perception of just how Christian you are as you shower us with your love. Rationalize your actions all you want, and continue to judge, as you will (you may not be able to stop yourself).
We will all be judged. Let's rejoice in the fact that He is a patient, merciful, loyal and righteous one.

I appreciate the compliment you gave me in your last sentence.

For 40 years, the Israelites had manna to eat and nothing anything else. Those who chose not to eat it chose not to eat. When the people got bored with it they complained so God provided them birds, but so many that they soon got sick of it. We humans love to complain about things and rarely appreciate everything God does for us.

historian said:

---

For 40 years, the Israelites had manna to eat and nothing anything else. Those who chose not to eat it chose not to eat. When the people got bored with it they complained so God provided them birds, but so many that they soon got sick of it. We humans love to complain about things and rarely appreciate everything God does for us.

---

Amen!

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Here we go again, folks. They can't answer my question or argue with substance, so they try to redirect the conversation with a preachy attitude about my conversation method or other "character faults" they perceive. It never fails.

If Doc won't answer me, then can any other Orthodox/Roman Catholic actually address what I'm asking? What exactly does a believer miss out on if they don't take communion with the "Real Presence" but rather with a symbolic/memorialist view? Be clear.

---

Hey I'm not on here all the time, you need to stop making demands like you have some kind of authority around here.

I gave you 6 paragraphs of reasoning that you ignored, but we can go straight to Paul:

Hebrews 13:9-15. Paul contrasts the animals sacrificed by Israel at the tabernacle with what we have, which is an altar that those who serve the tent have no right to eat from. He calls it an altar, with a sacrifice, contrasted to the symbolic sacrifices of the animals.

Then he says "let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God." Do you know what that word is there, sacrifice of praise? Eucharistia. The whole passage is about the superiority of our Eucharistic offering and meal that we eat versus what the Jews eat at the tabernacle, the animals.

Your reformed position forces you to take the equivalent to Old Testament symbolism, but that's exactly what Paul is contrasting it against. He's not saying the way to eat non carnally is without your mouth, because he says we eat at an altar. You don't have an altar in your theology. So what are you actually eating or even doing?

If it were symbolic, Hebrews wouldn't need to build the whole case on continuity with tabernacle categories. It would just tell you to stop sacrificing and start believing. Instead it tells you the sacrifice continues, just transformed.

Paul says the same thing in 1 Corinthians 10, "the bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?" Participation (koinonia) is stronger than remembrance. You don't participate in a symbol. So concretely, what's missed is this: real, ongoing union with Christ's actual life through the physical means he appointed, not a mental exercise about a past event. The whole logic of the Incarnation is that God saves us through matter, not around it. Water really regenerates in baptism, oil really heals in anointing, and bread and wine really become his body and blood, because God doesn't leave matter behind when he saves us, he sanctifies it and works through it

---

You're STILL not answering the question. You've gotten lost and are now arguing something different.

I'll try again: what exactly does a believer miss out on if they don't take communion with the "Real Presence" but rather with a symbolic/memorialist view? You quoted Jesus in John 6:53 as your "answer" - so then explain: what is this verse saying about what that believer misses out on? Tell us exactly. Be clear.

---

What's missed is real, ongoing union with Christ's actual life through the physical means he appointed. You don't have that because you deny its physical.

---

But... what does that mean? What does it entail, in REAL terms? What is a believer who is not in an "ongoing union with Christ's actual life through physical means" actually missing or in danger of?

You're only replacing unclear language with more unclear language.

---

Its very clear and you're the one refusing to answer my questions. You demand answers from me and refuse to answer questions just asked to you.

It entails multiple things: bodily resurrection, healing, and abiding.

---

I'm not refusing to answer your questions, I'm trying to keep you focused on the issue I raised at the beginning, so I'm narrowing the attention to that specific point, because you keep running away from it and hiding that fact by writing long posts and asking your own set of questions. I have to keep the focus on the relevant point for the sake of clarity.

So, regarding your answers here (which you could have just clearly given from the beginning, but instead you made me go through the whole rigamarole of getting you to focus and honestly answer the question): bodily resurrection, healing, and abiding. Obviously, healing and abiding are not isolated to only those who take the "Real Presence" in communion. So I'm not sure how you can even argue that these are what a believer would miss out on simply by taking the symbolic/memorialist view of communion, or by not taking communion at all. That leaves "bodily resurrection", which ultimately means salvation to eternal life. Meaning specifically, that a person who believes in the Gospel and places their full trust in Jesus for their salvation, but who does NOT take the "Real Presence" in communion, is still NOT SAVED. This clearly is false. It falsifies everything we know from Scripture about salvation. The people in Scripture who we know got saved, like the thief on the cross, the sinful woman of Luke 7, and the house of Cornelius, ATE NOTHING. You'd even have to say that the house of Cornelius, even after believing the gospel, receiving the Holy Spirit, and getting water baptized, if they were to die right afterwards, they would NOT be saved because they didn't physically consume communion bread and wine. Any rational believer can easily see that this is totally absurd and just isn't supported in Scripture.

A believer who does not ever take communion or who does not take the "Real Presence" view, has absolutely nothing to worry about missing resurrection or salvation. In the very same chapter where Jesus says "whoever eats my flesh, I will raise him up on the last day" Jesus also says:

"For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day."

So if your view has it where someone can be a believer, but NOT have eternal life and NOT be raised (as yours does), then your view directly contradicts the words of Jesus, directly contradicts Scripture, and thus, simply isn't tenable.

I am amazed that there are those who call themselves "Christian" who actually believe that God is going to make a person's eternal fate not based on what's truly in their hearts, but rather completely contingent upon what they're able to physically put in their stomachs. If you truly believe this, then you don't know the character of God, and you just don't understand the Gospel.

BUDOS said:

---

So, is it, that although you have &/or have access to extensive religious knowledge, you get a little bit nervous/scared, when you either find yourself being articulately challenged and/or find that someone made a statement which directly challenges one of your core beliefs?

---

LOL. So obvious it's the other way around, especially with you. That's why you regularly employ your defense mechanism tactics, much like you are doing now.

As you can't see, your response to me, and to some others recently and in my past, only weaken your argument. You are responding exactly as I said you would. You keep forgetting that just because you say something is so doesn't make it so.

As much as you believe you can decide/judge someone is right or wrong and that is the final judgement, that is part of your apparent personality disorder, which I noted previously. Most of your responses are textbook examples of your issue, and those responses which immensely diminishes their credibility and content.
Good luck with sounding credible with your repeated deflective efforts. Perhaps it's part of your efforts to protect your core beliefs &/or your ego. Again I appreciate your compliment in the response previous to your last one.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Here we go again, folks. They can't answer my question or argue with substance, so they try to redirect the conversation with a preachy attitude about my conversation method or other "character faults" they perceive. It never fails.

If Doc won't answer me, then can any other Orthodox/Roman Catholic actually address what I'm asking? What exactly does a believer miss out on if they don't take communion with the "Real Presence" but rather with a symbolic/memorialist view? Be clear.

---

Hey I'm not on here all the time, you need to stop making demands like you have some kind of authority around here.

I gave you 6 paragraphs of reasoning that you ignored, but we can go straight to Paul:

Hebrews 13:9-15. Paul contrasts the animals sacrificed by Israel at the tabernacle with what we have, which is an altar that those who serve the tent have no right to eat from. He calls it an altar, with a sacrifice, contrasted to the symbolic sacrifices of the animals.

Then he says "let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God." Do you know what that word is there, sacrifice of praise? Eucharistia. The whole passage is about the superiority of our Eucharistic offering and meal that we eat versus what the Jews eat at the tabernacle, the animals.

Your reformed position forces you to take the equivalent to Old Testament symbolism, but that's exactly what Paul is contrasting it against. He's not saying the way to eat non carnally is without your mouth, because he says we eat at an altar. You don't have an altar in your theology. So what are you actually eating or even doing?

If it were symbolic, Hebrews wouldn't need to build the whole case on continuity with tabernacle categories. It would just tell you to stop sacrificing and start believing. Instead it tells you the sacrifice continues, just transformed.

Paul says the same thing in 1 Corinthians 10, "the bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?" Participation (koinonia) is stronger than remembrance. You don't participate in a symbol. So concretely, what's missed is this: real, ongoing union with Christ's actual life through the physical means he appointed, not a mental exercise about a past event. The whole logic of the Incarnation is that God saves us through matter, not around it. Water really regenerates in baptism, oil really heals in anointing, and bread and wine really become his body and blood, because God doesn't leave matter behind when he saves us, he sanctifies it and works through it

---

You're STILL not answering the question. You've gotten lost and are now arguing something different.

I'll try again: what exactly does a believer miss out on if they don't take communion with the "Real Presence" but rather with a symbolic/memorialist view? You quoted Jesus in John 6:53 as your "answer" - so then explain: what is this verse saying about what that believer misses out on? Tell us exactly. Be clear.

---

What's missed is real, ongoing union with Christ's actual life through the physical means he appointed. You don't have that because you deny its physical.

---

But... what does that mean? What does it entail, in REAL terms? What is a believer who is not in an "ongoing union with Christ's actual life through physical means" actually missing or in danger of?

You're only replacing unclear language with more unclear language.

---

Its very clear and you're the one refusing to answer my questions. You demand answers from me and refuse to answer questions just asked to you.

It entails multiple things: bodily resurrection, healing, and abiding.

---

I'm not refusing to answer your questions, I'm trying to keep you focused on the issue I raised at the beginning, so I'm narrowing the attention to that specific point, because you keep running away from it and hiding that fact by writing long posts and asking your own set of questions. I have to keep the focus on the relevant point for the sake of clarity.

So, regarding your answers here (which you could have just clearly given from the beginning, but instead you made me go through the whole rigamarole of getting you to focus and honestly answer the question): bodily resurrection, healing, and abiding. Obviously, healing and abiding are not isolated to only those who take the "Real Presence" in communion. So I'm not sure how you can even argue that these are what a believer would miss out on simply by taking the symbolic/memorialist view of communion, or by not taking communion at all. That leaves "bodily resurrection", which ultimately means salvation to eternal life. Meaning specifically, that a person who believes in the Gospel and places their full trust in Jesus for their salvation, but who does NOT take the "Real Presence" in communion, is still NOT SAVED. This clearly is false. It falsifies everything we know from Scripture about salvation. The people in Scripture who we know got saved, like the thief on the cross, the sinful woman of Luke 7, and the house of Cornelius, ATE NOTHING. You'd even have to say that the house of Cornelius, even after believing the gospel, receiving the Holy Spirit, and getting water baptized, if they were to die right afterwards, they would NOT be saved because they didn't physically consume communion bread and wine. Any rational believer can easily see that this is totally absurd and just isn't supported in Scripture.

A believer who does not ever take communion or who does not take the "Real Presence" view, has absolutely nothing to worry about missing resurrection or salvation. In the very same chapter where Jesus says "whoever eats my flesh, I will raise him up on the last day" Jesus also says:

"For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day."

So if your view has it where someone can be a believer, but NOT have eternal life and NOT be raised (as yours does), then your view directly contradicts the words of Jesus, directly contradicts Scripture, and thus, simply isn't tenable.

I am amazed that there are those who call themselves "Christian" who actually believe that God is going to make a person's eternal fate not based on what's truly in their hearts, but rather completely contingent upon what they're able to physically put in their stomachs. If you truly believe this, then you don't know the character of God, and you just don't understand the Gospel.

---

I go into detail because this is more complex than you realize, and you've never really dealt with Eastern Christianity, it's a radically different framework than the West. Christianity developed primarily in the eastern world, not the Latin world.

I can tell you don't have a clue what argument or what my position actually is, because you think I'm making a claim that those who don't partake in the Eucharist are automatically damned. Orthodoxy doesn't claim people outside the Church or without access to the Eucharist are automatically damned. We don't claim to know the boundaries of God's mercy that precisely, only that the Church has been given the fullness of the means of grace. That's a Roman Catholic caricature you're arguing against, not the Orthodox position.

Eastern Christianity is relational. Latin/Western Christianity (you) is transactional, built on legal categories: guilt, merit, satisfaction, a ledger that gets balanced. That's why the reformation happened, Rome got hyper transactional, and guess what…you're hyper transactional too! Just look at your response to me.

This confuses you because you're looking for a marker, a specific criteria or event that flips your status. That reasoning doesn't show up until after the medieval West. It's nominalist: salvation as a legal declaration applied at a single point, based on one transaction, belief as a mental act.

I don't think in single markers, and neither did anyone in the time of Christ and the apostles. Salvation is union with Christ that begins, grows, and is sustained, not a status acquired once and carried around regardless of what follows. Baptism, chrismation, the Eucharist, ongoing repentance, these aren't hoops bolted onto "real" salvation. They're the actual life of being joined to Christ, the way a marriage isn't just the vow, it's the whole ongoing union the vow inaugurates.

BUDOS said:

---

As you can't see, your response to me, and to some others recently and in my past, only weaken your argument. You are responding exactly as I said you would. You keep forgetting that just because you say something is so doesn't make it so.

As much as you believe you can decide/judge someone is right or wrong and that is the final judgement, that is part of your apparent personality disorder, which I noted previously. Most of your responses are textbook examples of your issue, and those responses which immensely diminishes their credibility and content.
Good luck with sounding credible with your repeated deflective efforts. Perhaps it's part of your efforts to protect your core beliefs &/or your ego. Again I appreciate your compliment in the response previous to your last one.

---

^^^^ ding, ding, ding! There it is, just as I said!!

I'll repeat what I posted earlier:
"Here we go again, folks. They can't answer my question or argue with substance, so they try to redirect the conversation with a preachy attitude about my conversation method or other "character faults" they perceive. It never fails."

You don't like what I'm arguing, so you're resorting to your usual tactic of "weakening my argument" not by actually arguing against its merits, but by attacking my person. Like clockwork, just as I said. Only flawed, weak minds do this or buy into it.

If you are realy compelled to continue impeding constructive dialogue and clarity as you usually do, please make it brief. If you want to continue to push for dialogue where it's just people breathing hot air past each other and going home feeling good about their beliefs which may be false, then you're free to seek that kind of dialogue. However, some of us would actually like to pursue the truth, and with clarity.

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Here we go again, folks. They can't answer my question or argue with substance, so they try to redirect the conversation with a preachy attitude about my conversation method or other "character faults" they perceive. It never fails.

If Doc won't answer me, then can any other Orthodox/Roman Catholic actually address what I'm asking? What exactly does a believer miss out on if they don't take communion with the "Real Presence" but rather with a symbolic/memorialist view? Be clear.

---

Hey I'm not on here all the time, you need to stop making demands like you have some kind of authority around here.

I gave you 6 paragraphs of reasoning that you ignored, but we can go straight to Paul:

Hebrews 13:9-15. Paul contrasts the animals sacrificed by Israel at the tabernacle with what we have, which is an altar that those who serve the tent have no right to eat from. He calls it an altar, with a sacrifice, contrasted to the symbolic sacrifices of the animals.

Then he says "let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God." Do you know what that word is there, sacrifice of praise? Eucharistia. The whole passage is about the superiority of our Eucharistic offering and meal that we eat versus what the Jews eat at the tabernacle, the animals.

Your reformed position forces you to take the equivalent to Old Testament symbolism, but that's exactly what Paul is contrasting it against. He's not saying the way to eat non carnally is without your mouth, because he says we eat at an altar. You don't have an altar in your theology. So what are you actually eating or even doing?

If it were symbolic, Hebrews wouldn't need to build the whole case on continuity with tabernacle categories. It would just tell you to stop sacrificing and start believing. Instead it tells you the sacrifice continues, just transformed.

Paul says the same thing in 1 Corinthians 10, "the bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?" Participation (koinonia) is stronger than remembrance. You don't participate in a symbol. So concretely, what's missed is this: real, ongoing union with Christ's actual life through the physical means he appointed, not a mental exercise about a past event. The whole logic of the Incarnation is that God saves us through matter, not around it. Water really regenerates in baptism, oil really heals in anointing, and bread and wine really become his body and blood, because God doesn't leave matter behind when he saves us, he sanctifies it and works through it

---

You're STILL not answering the question. You've gotten lost and are now arguing something different.

I'll try again: what exactly does a believer miss out on if they don't take communion with the "Real Presence" but rather with a symbolic/memorialist view? You quoted Jesus in John 6:53 as your "answer" - so then explain: what is this verse saying about what that believer misses out on? Tell us exactly. Be clear.

---

What's missed is real, ongoing union with Christ's actual life through the physical means he appointed. You don't have that because you deny its physical.

---

But... what does that mean? What does it entail, in REAL terms? What is a believer who is not in an "ongoing union with Christ's actual life through physical means" actually missing or in danger of?

You're only replacing unclear language with more unclear language.

---

Its very clear and you're the one refusing to answer my questions. You demand answers from me and refuse to answer questions just asked to you.

It entails multiple things: bodily resurrection, healing, and abiding.

---

I'm not refusing to answer your questions, I'm trying to keep you focused on the issue I raised at the beginning, so I'm narrowing the attention to that specific point, because you keep running away from it and hiding that fact by writing long posts and asking your own set of questions. I have to keep the focus on the relevant point for the sake of clarity.

So, regarding your answers here (which you could have just clearly given from the beginning, but instead you made me go through the whole rigamarole of getting you to focus and honestly answer the question): bodily resurrection, healing, and abiding. Obviously, healing and abiding are not isolated to only those who take the "Real Presence" in communion. So I'm not sure how you can even argue that these are what a believer would miss out on simply by taking the symbolic/memorialist view of communion, or by not taking communion at all. That leaves "bodily resurrection", which ultimately means salvation to eternal life. Meaning specifically, that a person who believes in the Gospel and places their full trust in Jesus for their salvation, but who does NOT take the "Real Presence" in communion, is still NOT SAVED. This clearly is false. It falsifies everything we know from Scripture about salvation. The people in Scripture who we know got saved, like the thief on the cross, the sinful woman of Luke 7, and the house of Cornelius, ATE NOTHING. You'd even have to say that the house of Cornelius, even after believing the gospel, receiving the Holy Spirit, and getting water baptized, if they were to die right afterwards, they would NOT be saved because they didn't physically consume communion bread and wine. Any rational believer can easily see that this is totally absurd and just isn't supported in Scripture.

A believer who does not ever take communion or who does not take the "Real Presence" view, has absolutely nothing to worry about missing resurrection or salvation. In the very same chapter where Jesus says "whoever eats my flesh, I will raise him up on the last day" Jesus also says:

"For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day."

So if your view has it where someone can be a believer, but NOT have eternal life and NOT be raised (as yours does), then your view directly contradicts the words of Jesus, directly contradicts Scripture, and thus, simply isn't tenable.

I am amazed that there are those who call themselves "Christian" who actually believe that God is going to make a person's eternal fate not based on what's truly in their hearts, but rather completely contingent upon what they're able to physically put in their stomachs. If you truly believe this, then you don't know the character of God, and you just don't understand the Gospel.

---

I go into detail because this is more complex than you realize, and you've never really dealt with Eastern Christianity, it's a radically different framework than the West. Christianity developed primarily in the eastern world, not the Latin world.

I can tell you don't have a clue what argument or what my position actually is, because you think I'm making a claim that those who don't partake in the Eucharist are automatically damned. Orthodoxy doesn't claim people outside the Church or without access to the Eucharist are automatically damned. We don't claim to know the boundaries of God's mercy that precisely, only that the Church has been given the fullness of the means of grace. That's a Roman Catholic caricature you're arguing against, not the Orthodox position.

---

It is a caricature, but you're quite confused if you think there's anything remotely Catholic about it.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Here we go again, folks. They can't answer my question or argue with substance, so they try to redirect the conversation with a preachy attitude about my conversation method or other "character faults" they perceive. It never fails.

If Doc won't answer me, then can any other Orthodox/Roman Catholic actually address what I'm asking? What exactly does a believer miss out on if they don't take communion with the "Real Presence" but rather with a symbolic/memorialist view? Be clear.

---

Hey I'm not on here all the time, you need to stop making demands like you have some kind of authority around here.

I gave you 6 paragraphs of reasoning that you ignored, but we can go straight to Paul:

Hebrews 13:9-15. Paul contrasts the animals sacrificed by Israel at the tabernacle with what we have, which is an altar that those who serve the tent have no right to eat from. He calls it an altar, with a sacrifice, contrasted to the symbolic sacrifices of the animals.

Then he says "let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God." Do you know what that word is there, sacrifice of praise? Eucharistia. The whole passage is about the superiority of our Eucharistic offering and meal that we eat versus what the Jews eat at the tabernacle, the animals.

Your reformed position forces you to take the equivalent to Old Testament symbolism, but that's exactly what Paul is contrasting it against. He's not saying the way to eat non carnally is without your mouth, because he says we eat at an altar. You don't have an altar in your theology. So what are you actually eating or even doing?

If it were symbolic, Hebrews wouldn't need to build the whole case on continuity with tabernacle categories. It would just tell you to stop sacrificing and start believing. Instead it tells you the sacrifice continues, just transformed.

Paul says the same thing in 1 Corinthians 10, "the bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?" Participation (koinonia) is stronger than remembrance. You don't participate in a symbol. So concretely, what's missed is this: real, ongoing union with Christ's actual life through the physical means he appointed, not a mental exercise about a past event. The whole logic of the Incarnation is that God saves us through matter, not around it. Water really regenerates in baptism, oil really heals in anointing, and bread and wine really become his body and blood, because God doesn't leave matter behind when he saves us, he sanctifies it and works through it

---

You're STILL not answering the question. You've gotten lost and are now arguing something different.

I'll try again: what exactly does a believer miss out on if they don't take communion with the "Real Presence" but rather with a symbolic/memorialist view? You quoted Jesus in John 6:53 as your "answer" - so then explain: what is this verse saying about what that believer misses out on? Tell us exactly. Be clear.

---

What's missed is real, ongoing union with Christ's actual life through the physical means he appointed. You don't have that because you deny its physical.

---

But... what does that mean? What does it entail, in REAL terms? What is a believer who is not in an "ongoing union with Christ's actual life through physical means" actually missing or in danger of?

You're only replacing unclear language with more unclear language.

---

Its very clear and you're the one refusing to answer my questions. You demand answers from me and refuse to answer questions just asked to you.

It entails multiple things: bodily resurrection, healing, and abiding.

---

The people in Scripture who we know got saved, like the thief on the cross, the sinful woman of Luke 7, and the house of Cornelius, ATE NOTHING. You'd even have to say that the house of Cornelius, even after believing the gospel, receiving the Holy Spirit, and getting water baptized, if they were to die right afterwards, they would NOT be saved because they didn't physically consume communion bread and wine. Any rational believer can easily see that this is totally absurd and just isn't supported in Scripture.

---

And it's not what anyone believes.

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Here we go again, folks. They can't answer my question or argue with substance, so they try to redirect the conversation with a preachy attitude about my conversation method or other "character faults" they perceive. It never fails.

If Doc won't answer me, then can any other Orthodox/Roman Catholic actually address what I'm asking? What exactly does a believer miss out on if they don't take communion with the "Real Presence" but rather with a symbolic/memorialist view? Be clear.

---

Hey I'm not on here all the time, you need to stop making demands like you have some kind of authority around here.

I gave you 6 paragraphs of reasoning that you ignored, but we can go straight to Paul:

Hebrews 13:9-15. Paul contrasts the animals sacrificed by Israel at the tabernacle with what we have, which is an altar that those who serve the tent have no right to eat from. He calls it an altar, with a sacrifice, contrasted to the symbolic sacrifices of the animals.

Then he says "let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God." Do you know what that word is there, sacrifice of praise? Eucharistia. The whole passage is about the superiority of our Eucharistic offering and meal that we eat versus what the Jews eat at the tabernacle, the animals.

Your reformed position forces you to take the equivalent to Old Testament symbolism, but that's exactly what Paul is contrasting it against. He's not saying the way to eat non carnally is without your mouth, because he says we eat at an altar. You don't have an altar in your theology. So what are you actually eating or even doing?

If it were symbolic, Hebrews wouldn't need to build the whole case on continuity with tabernacle categories. It would just tell you to stop sacrificing and start believing. Instead it tells you the sacrifice continues, just transformed.

Paul says the same thing in 1 Corinthians 10, "the bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?" Participation (koinonia) is stronger than remembrance. You don't participate in a symbol. So concretely, what's missed is this: real, ongoing union with Christ's actual life through the physical means he appointed, not a mental exercise about a past event. The whole logic of the Incarnation is that God saves us through matter, not around it. Water really regenerates in baptism, oil really heals in anointing, and bread and wine really become his body and blood, because God doesn't leave matter behind when he saves us, he sanctifies it and works through it

---

You're STILL not answering the question. You've gotten lost and are now arguing something different.

I'll try again: what exactly does a believer miss out on if they don't take communion with the "Real Presence" but rather with a symbolic/memorialist view? You quoted Jesus in John 6:53 as your "answer" - so then explain: what is this verse saying about what that believer misses out on? Tell us exactly. Be clear.

---

What's missed is real, ongoing union with Christ's actual life through the physical means he appointed. You don't have that because you deny its physical.

---

But... what does that mean? What does it entail, in REAL terms? What is a believer who is not in an "ongoing union with Christ's actual life through physical means" actually missing or in danger of?

You're only replacing unclear language with more unclear language.

---

Its very clear and you're the one refusing to answer my questions. You demand answers from me and refuse to answer questions just asked to you.

It entails multiple things: bodily resurrection, healing, and abiding.

---

I'm not refusing to answer your questions, I'm trying to keep you focused on the issue I raised at the beginning, so I'm narrowing the attention to that specific point, because you keep running away from it and hiding that fact by writing long posts and asking your own set of questions. I have to keep the focus on the relevant point for the sake of clarity.

So, regarding your answers here (which you could have just clearly given from the beginning, but instead you made me go through the whole rigamarole of getting you to focus and honestly answer the question): bodily resurrection, healing, and abiding. Obviously, healing and abiding are not isolated to only those who take the "Real Presence" in communion. So I'm not sure how you can even argue that these are what a believer would miss out on simply by taking the symbolic/memorialist view of communion, or by not taking communion at all. That leaves "bodily resurrection", which ultimately means salvation to eternal life. Meaning specifically, that a person who believes in the Gospel and places their full trust in Jesus for their salvation, but who does NOT take the "Real Presence" in communion, is still NOT SAVED. This clearly is false. It falsifies everything we know from Scripture about salvation. The people in Scripture who we know got saved, like the thief on the cross, the sinful woman of Luke 7, and the house of Cornelius, ATE NOTHING. You'd even have to say that the house of Cornelius, even after believing the gospel, receiving the Holy Spirit, and getting water baptized, if they were to die right afterwards, they would NOT be saved because they didn't physically consume communion bread and wine. Any rational believer can easily see that this is totally absurd and just isn't supported in Scripture.

A believer who does not ever take communion or who does not take the "Real Presence" view, has absolutely nothing to worry about missing resurrection or salvation. In the very same chapter where Jesus says "whoever eats my flesh, I will raise him up on the last day" Jesus also says:

"For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day."

So if your view has it where someone can be a believer, but NOT have eternal life and NOT be raised (as yours does), then your view directly contradicts the words of Jesus, directly contradicts Scripture, and thus, simply isn't tenable.

I am amazed that there are those who call themselves "Christian" who actually believe that God is going to make a person's eternal fate not based on what's truly in their hearts, but rather completely contingent upon what they're able to physically put in their stomachs. If you truly believe this, then you don't know the character of God, and you just don't understand the Gospel.

---

I go into detail because this is more complex than you realize, and you've never really dealt with Eastern Christianity, it's a radically different framework than the West. Christianity developed primarily in the eastern world, not the Latin world.

I can tell you don't have a clue what argument or what my position actually is, because you think I'm making a claim that those who don't partake in the Eucharist are automatically damned. Orthodoxy doesn't claim people outside the Church or without access to the Eucharist are automatically damned. We don't claim to know the boundaries of God's mercy that precisely, only that the Church has been given the fullness of the means of grace. That's a Roman Catholic caricature you're arguing against, not the Orthodox position.

Eastern Christianity is relational. Latin/Western Christianity (you) is transactional, built on legal categories: guilt, merit, satisfaction, a ledger that gets balanced. That's why the reformation happened, Rome got hyper transactional, and guess what…you're hyper transactional too! Just look at your response to me.

This confuses you because you're looking for a marker, a specific criteria or event that flips your status. That reasoning doesn't show up until after the medieval West. It's nominalist: salvation as a legal declaration applied at a single point, based on one transaction, belief as a mental act.

I don't think in single markers, and neither did anyone in the time of Christ and the apostles. Salvation is union with Christ that begins, grows, and is sustained, not a status acquired once and carried around regardless of what follows. Baptism, chrismation, the Eucharist, ongoing repentance, these aren't hoops bolted onto "real" salvation. They're the actual life of being joined to Christ, the way a marriage isn't just the vow, it's the whole ongoing union the vow inaugurates.

---

But you JUST said that what the believer will miss if they don't take the "Real Presence" communion meal is resurrection, i.e. salvation. And now you're hedging on it, and thus retreating away from clarity and back into obfuscation. And now we're back to where we started - we still don't know what it is, exactly, that a believer misses out on if they don't take the "Real Presence" in communion, and hence WHY the Eucharist bread and wine HAVE TO be the real body and blood of Jesus in the first place, instead of being a symbol or memorial. Therefore, your church (as well as Roman Catholicism) isn't making a very good case at all why the "Real Presence" view is a salvivic one, and therefore mandatory in your church. That's my whole point here.

Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Here we go again, folks. They can't answer my question or argue with substance, so they try to redirect the conversation with a preachy attitude about my conversation method or other "character faults" they perceive. It never fails.

If Doc won't answer me, then can any other Orthodox/Roman Catholic actually address what I'm asking? What exactly does a believer miss out on if they don't take communion with the "Real Presence" but rather with a symbolic/memorialist view? Be clear.

---

Hey I'm not on here all the time, you need to stop making demands like you have some kind of authority around here.

I gave you 6 paragraphs of reasoning that you ignored, but we can go straight to Paul:

Hebrews 13:9-15. Paul contrasts the animals sacrificed by Israel at the tabernacle with what we have, which is an altar that those who serve the tent have no right to eat from. He calls it an altar, with a sacrifice, contrasted to the symbolic sacrifices of the animals.

Then he says "let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God." Do you know what that word is there, sacrifice of praise? Eucharistia. The whole passage is about the superiority of our Eucharistic offering and meal that we eat versus what the Jews eat at the tabernacle, the animals.

Your reformed position forces you to take the equivalent to Old Testament symbolism, but that's exactly what Paul is contrasting it against. He's not saying the way to eat non carnally is without your mouth, because he says we eat at an altar. You don't have an altar in your theology. So what are you actually eating or even doing?

If it were symbolic, Hebrews wouldn't need to build the whole case on continuity with tabernacle categories. It would just tell you to stop sacrificing and start believing. Instead it tells you the sacrifice continues, just transformed.

Paul says the same thing in 1 Corinthians 10, "the bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?" Participation (koinonia) is stronger than remembrance. You don't participate in a symbol. So concretely, what's missed is this: real, ongoing union with Christ's actual life through the physical means he appointed, not a mental exercise about a past event. The whole logic of the Incarnation is that God saves us through matter, not around it. Water really regenerates in baptism, oil really heals in anointing, and bread and wine really become his body and blood, because God doesn't leave matter behind when he saves us, he sanctifies it and works through it

---

You're STILL not answering the question. You've gotten lost and are now arguing something different.

I'll try again: what exactly does a believer miss out on if they don't take communion with the "Real Presence" but rather with a symbolic/memorialist view? You quoted Jesus in John 6:53 as your "answer" - so then explain: what is this verse saying about what that believer misses out on? Tell us exactly. Be clear.

---

What's missed is real, ongoing union with Christ's actual life through the physical means he appointed. You don't have that because you deny its physical.

---

But... what does that mean? What does it entail, in REAL terms? What is a believer who is not in an "ongoing union with Christ's actual life through physical means" actually missing or in danger of?

You're only replacing unclear language with more unclear language.

---

Its very clear and you're the one refusing to answer my questions. You demand answers from me and refuse to answer questions just asked to you.

It entails multiple things: bodily resurrection, healing, and abiding.

---

The people in Scripture who we know got saved, like the thief on the cross, the sinful woman of Luke 7, and the house of Cornelius, ATE NOTHING. You'd even have to say that the house of Cornelius, even after believing the gospel, receiving the Holy Spirit, and getting water baptized, if they were to die right afterwards, they would NOT be saved because they didn't physically consume communion bread and wine. Any rational believer can easily see that this is totally absurd and just isn't supported in Scripture.

---

And it's not what anyone believes.

---

According to what he answered (and then hedged on, which I'm sure you're familiar with), yes, that's essentially what he said he believed. I think you just have trouble with clarity, like most here.

And if you take the literal meaning of John 6, i.e. the "eating" of Jesus' flesh, then you have to believe this too, otherwise your view contradicts itself and becomes completely untenable. But like I said, your church seems to be very comfortable in double talk and picking and choosing. It HAS to, because it's the only way their views can appear to stand.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Here we go again, folks. They can't answer my question or argue with substance, so they try to redirect the conversation with a preachy attitude about my conversation method or other "character faults" they perceive. It never fails.

If Doc won't answer me, then can any other Orthodox/Roman Catholic actually address what I'm asking? What exactly does a believer miss out on if they don't take communion with the "Real Presence" but rather with a symbolic/memorialist view? Be clear.

---

Hey I'm not on here all the time, you need to stop making demands like you have some kind of authority around here.

I gave you 6 paragraphs of reasoning that you ignored, but we can go straight to Paul:

Hebrews 13:9-15. Paul contrasts the animals sacrificed by Israel at the tabernacle with what we have, which is an altar that those who serve the tent have no right to eat from. He calls it an altar, with a sacrifice, contrasted to the symbolic sacrifices of the animals.

Then he says "let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God." Do you know what that word is there, sacrifice of praise? Eucharistia. The whole passage is about the superiority of our Eucharistic offering and meal that we eat versus what the Jews eat at the tabernacle, the animals.

Your reformed position forces you to take the equivalent to Old Testament symbolism, but that's exactly what Paul is contrasting it against. He's not saying the way to eat non carnally is without your mouth, because he says we eat at an altar. You don't have an altar in your theology. So what are you actually eating or even doing?

If it were symbolic, Hebrews wouldn't need to build the whole case on continuity with tabernacle categories. It would just tell you to stop sacrificing and start believing. Instead it tells you the sacrifice continues, just transformed.

Paul says the same thing in 1 Corinthians 10, "the bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?" Participation (koinonia) is stronger than remembrance. You don't participate in a symbol. So concretely, what's missed is this: real, ongoing union with Christ's actual life through the physical means he appointed, not a mental exercise about a past event. The whole logic of the Incarnation is that God saves us through matter, not around it. Water really regenerates in baptism, oil really heals in anointing, and bread and wine really become his body and blood, because God doesn't leave matter behind when he saves us, he sanctifies it and works through it

---

You're STILL not answering the question. You've gotten lost and are now arguing something different.

I'll try again: what exactly does a believer miss out on if they don't take communion with the "Real Presence" but rather with a symbolic/memorialist view? You quoted Jesus in John 6:53 as your "answer" - so then explain: what is this verse saying about what that believer misses out on? Tell us exactly. Be clear.

---

What's missed is real, ongoing union with Christ's actual life through the physical means he appointed. You don't have that because you deny its physical.

---

But... what does that mean? What does it entail, in REAL terms? What is a believer who is not in an "ongoing union with Christ's actual life through physical means" actually missing or in danger of?

You're only replacing unclear language with more unclear language.

---

Its very clear and you're the one refusing to answer my questions. You demand answers from me and refuse to answer questions just asked to you.

It entails multiple things: bodily resurrection, healing, and abiding.

---

I'm not refusing to answer your questions, I'm trying to keep you focused on the issue I raised at the beginning, so I'm narrowing the attention to that specific point, because you keep running away from it and hiding that fact by writing long posts and asking your own set of questions. I have to keep the focus on the relevant point for the sake of clarity.

So, regarding your answers here (which you could have just clearly given from the beginning, but instead you made me go through the whole rigamarole of getting you to focus and honestly answer the question): bodily resurrection, healing, and abiding. Obviously, healing and abiding are not isolated to only those who take the "Real Presence" in communion. So I'm not sure how you can even argue that these are what a believer would miss out on simply by taking the symbolic/memorialist view of communion, or by not taking communion at all. That leaves "bodily resurrection", which ultimately means salvation to eternal life. Meaning specifically, that a person who believes in the Gospel and places their full trust in Jesus for their salvation, but who does NOT take the "Real Presence" in communion, is still NOT SAVED. This clearly is false. It falsifies everything we know from Scripture about salvation. The people in Scripture who we know got saved, like the thief on the cross, the sinful woman of Luke 7, and the house of Cornelius, ATE NOTHING. You'd even have to say that the house of Cornelius, even after believing the gospel, receiving the Holy Spirit, and getting water baptized, if they were to die right afterwards, they would NOT be saved because they didn't physically consume communion bread and wine. Any rational believer can easily see that this is totally absurd and just isn't supported in Scripture.

A believer who does not ever take communion or who does not take the "Real Presence" view, has absolutely nothing to worry about missing resurrection or salvation. In the very same chapter where Jesus says "whoever eats my flesh, I will raise him up on the last day" Jesus also says:

"For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day."

So if your view has it where someone can be a believer, but NOT have eternal life and NOT be raised (as yours does), then your view directly contradicts the words of Jesus, directly contradicts Scripture, and thus, simply isn't tenable.

I am amazed that there are those who call themselves "Christian" who actually believe that God is going to make a person's eternal fate not based on what's truly in their hearts, but rather completely contingent upon what they're able to physically put in their stomachs. If you truly believe this, then you don't know the character of God, and you just don't understand the Gospel.

---

I go into detail because this is more complex than you realize, and you've never really dealt with Eastern Christianity, it's a radically different framework than the West. Christianity developed primarily in the eastern world, not the Latin world.

I can tell you don't have a clue what argument or what my position actually is, because you think I'm making a claim that those who don't partake in the Eucharist are automatically damned. Orthodoxy doesn't claim people outside the Church or without access to the Eucharist are automatically damned. We don't claim to know the boundaries of God's mercy that precisely, only that the Church has been given the fullness of the means of grace. That's a Roman Catholic caricature you're arguing against, not the Orthodox position.

Eastern Christianity is relational. Latin/Western Christianity (you) is transactional, built on legal categories: guilt, merit, satisfaction, a ledger that gets balanced. That's why the reformation happened, Rome got hyper transactional, and guess what…you're hyper transactional too! Just look at your response to me.

This confuses you because you're looking for a marker, a specific criteria or event that flips your status. That reasoning doesn't show up until after the medieval West. It's nominalist: salvation as a legal declaration applied at a single point, based on one transaction, belief as a mental act.

I don't think in single markers, and neither did anyone in the time of Christ and the apostles. Salvation is union with Christ that begins, grows, and is sustained, not a status acquired once and carried around regardless of what follows. Baptism, chrismation, the Eucharist, ongoing repentance, these aren't hoops bolted onto "real" salvation. They're the actual life of being joined to Christ, the way a marriage isn't just the vow, it's the whole ongoing union the vow inaugurates.

---

But you JUST said that what the believer will miss if they don't take the "Real Presence" communion meal is resurrection, i.e. salvation. And now you're hedging on it, and thus retreating away from clarity and back into obfuscation. And now we're back to where we started - we still don't know what it is, exactly, that a believer misses out on if they don't take the "Real Presence" in communion, and hence WHY the Eucharist bread and wine HAVE TO be the real body and blood of Jesus in the first place, instead of being a symbol or memorial. Therefore, your church (as well as Roman Catholicism) isn't making a very good case at all why the "Real Presence" view is a salvivic one, and therefore mandatory in your church. That's my whole point here.

---

You almost certainly believe faith normally comes through hearing the preached word, Romans 10:17, "faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ." That's the ordinary means God appointed. But you wouldn't say someone who never heard a sermon or read Scripture, an infant, someone in a coma, someone in a remote place who dies before ever hearing the gospel, is automatically and definitely damned with zero exception, as though God's hands are tied by his own ordinary pattern. You'd probably say something like "God normally works through preaching, and in extraordinary cases he's not limited to it." That's exactly the structure I'm using for the Eucharist.

So it's not that I'm inventing a special escape hatch for my view. I'm using the same category you already use for how faith itself comes about: this is the real, appointed, ordinary means, without claiming to know God's exact judgment on every person who lacked access to it through no fault of their own. Those are two separate questions, and collapsing them into "well then nothing really matters" or "well then it's all just mandatory with no exceptions" isn't how you reason about your own doctrine of faith and preaching. Why would it suddenly become obfuscation only when the topic is communion?

You gotta understand normative means. Until you actually understand normative means as a category, you're going to keep hearing "this is really necessary in the ordinary case" and "God isn't limited to the ordinary case" as a contradiction, when they're not. This is also exactly why the thief on the cross can't be the model you build a normal doctrine of salvation on. He's the extraordinary exception, dying next to Christ himself, with no opportunity for baptism, preaching, or a church, not the pattern. Nobody sane builds their theology by saying "well the thief didn't need X, so X must not really matter." You'd never tell a congregation "don't worry about baptism, hearing the gospel, or the church, just look at the thief." He's proof God can save outside the ordinary means when circumstances make the ordinary means impossible, not proof the ordinary means are optional for everyone else.

Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Here we go again, folks. They can't answer my question or argue with substance, so they try to redirect the conversation with a preachy attitude about my conversation method or other "character faults" they perceive. It never fails.

If Doc won't answer me, then can any other Orthodox/Roman Catholic actually address what I'm asking? What exactly does a believer miss out on if they don't take communion with the "Real Presence" but rather with a symbolic/memorialist view? Be clear.

---

Hey I'm not on here all the time, you need to stop making demands like you have some kind of authority around here.

I gave you 6 paragraphs of reasoning that you ignored, but we can go straight to Paul:

Hebrews 13:9-15. Paul contrasts the animals sacrificed by Israel at the tabernacle with what we have, which is an altar that those who serve the tent have no right to eat from. He calls it an altar, with a sacrifice, contrasted to the symbolic sacrifices of the animals.

Then he says "let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God." Do you know what that word is there, sacrifice of praise? Eucharistia. The whole passage is about the superiority of our Eucharistic offering and meal that we eat versus what the Jews eat at the tabernacle, the animals.

Your reformed position forces you to take the equivalent to Old Testament symbolism, but that's exactly what Paul is contrasting it against. He's not saying the way to eat non carnally is without your mouth, because he says we eat at an altar. You don't have an altar in your theology. So what are you actually eating or even doing?

If it were symbolic, Hebrews wouldn't need to build the whole case on continuity with tabernacle categories. It would just tell you to stop sacrificing and start believing. Instead it tells you the sacrifice continues, just transformed.

Paul says the same thing in 1 Corinthians 10, "the bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?" Participation (koinonia) is stronger than remembrance. You don't participate in a symbol. So concretely, what's missed is this: real, ongoing union with Christ's actual life through the physical means he appointed, not a mental exercise about a past event. The whole logic of the Incarnation is that God saves us through matter, not around it. Water really regenerates in baptism, oil really heals in anointing, and bread and wine really become his body and blood, because God doesn't leave matter behind when he saves us, he sanctifies it and works through it

---

You're STILL not answering the question. You've gotten lost and are now arguing something different.

I'll try again: what exactly does a believer miss out on if they don't take communion with the "Real Presence" but rather with a symbolic/memorialist view? You quoted Jesus in John 6:53 as your "answer" - so then explain: what is this verse saying about what that believer misses out on? Tell us exactly. Be clear.

---

What's missed is real, ongoing union with Christ's actual life through the physical means he appointed. You don't have that because you deny its physical.

---

But... what does that mean? What does it entail, in REAL terms? What is a believer who is not in an "ongoing union with Christ's actual life through physical means" actually missing or in danger of?

You're only replacing unclear language with more unclear language.

---

Its very clear and you're the one refusing to answer my questions. You demand answers from me and refuse to answer questions just asked to you.

It entails multiple things: bodily resurrection, healing, and abiding.

---

I'm not refusing to answer your questions, I'm trying to keep you focused on the issue I raised at the beginning, so I'm narrowing the attention to that specific point, because you keep running away from it and hiding that fact by writing long posts and asking your own set of questions. I have to keep the focus on the relevant point for the sake of clarity.

So, regarding your answers here (which you could have just clearly given from the beginning, but instead you made me go through the whole rigamarole of getting you to focus and honestly answer the question): bodily resurrection, healing, and abiding. Obviously, healing and abiding are not isolated to only those who take the "Real Presence" in communion. So I'm not sure how you can even argue that these are what a believer would miss out on simply by taking the symbolic/memorialist view of communion, or by not taking communion at all. That leaves "bodily resurrection", which ultimately means salvation to eternal life. Meaning specifically, that a person who believes in the Gospel and places their full trust in Jesus for their salvation, but who does NOT take the "Real Presence" in communion, is still NOT SAVED. This clearly is false. It falsifies everything we know from Scripture about salvation. The people in Scripture who we know got saved, like the thief on the cross, the sinful woman of Luke 7, and the house of Cornelius, ATE NOTHING. You'd even have to say that the house of Cornelius, even after believing the gospel, receiving the Holy Spirit, and getting water baptized, if they were to die right afterwards, they would NOT be saved because they didn't physically consume communion bread and wine. Any rational believer can easily see that this is totally absurd and just isn't supported in Scripture.

A believer who does not ever take communion or who does not take the "Real Presence" view, has absolutely nothing to worry about missing resurrection or salvation. In the very same chapter where Jesus says "whoever eats my flesh, I will raise him up on the last day" Jesus also says:

"For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day."

So if your view has it where someone can be a believer, but NOT have eternal life and NOT be raised (as yours does), then your view directly contradicts the words of Jesus, directly contradicts Scripture, and thus, simply isn't tenable.

I am amazed that there are those who call themselves "Christian" who actually believe that God is going to make a person's eternal fate not based on what's truly in their hearts, but rather completely contingent upon what they're able to physically put in their stomachs. If you truly believe this, then you don't know the character of God, and you just don't understand the Gospel.

---

I go into detail because this is more complex than you realize, and you've never really dealt with Eastern Christianity, it's a radically different framework than the West. Christianity developed primarily in the eastern world, not the Latin world.

I can tell you don't have a clue what argument or what my position actually is, because you think I'm making a claim that those who don't partake in the Eucharist are automatically damned. Orthodoxy doesn't claim people outside the Church or without access to the Eucharist are automatically damned. We don't claim to know the boundaries of God's mercy that precisely, only that the Church has been given the fullness of the means of grace. That's a Roman Catholic caricature you're arguing against, not the Orthodox position.

Eastern Christianity is relational. Latin/Western Christianity (you) is transactional, built on legal categories: guilt, merit, satisfaction, a ledger that gets balanced. That's why the reformation happened, Rome got hyper transactional, and guess what…you're hyper transactional too! Just look at your response to me.

This confuses you because you're looking for a marker, a specific criteria or event that flips your status. That reasoning doesn't show up until after the medieval West. It's nominalist: salvation as a legal declaration applied at a single point, based on one transaction, belief as a mental act.

I don't think in single markers, and neither did anyone in the time of Christ and the apostles. Salvation is union with Christ that begins, grows, and is sustained, not a status acquired once and carried around regardless of what follows. Baptism, chrismation, the Eucharist, ongoing repentance, these aren't hoops bolted onto "real" salvation. They're the actual life of being joined to Christ, the way a marriage isn't just the vow, it's the whole ongoing union the vow inaugurates.

---

But you JUST said that what the believer will miss if they don't take the "Real Presence" communion meal is resurrection, i.e. salvation. And now you're hedging on it, and thus retreating away from clarity and back into obfuscation. And now we're back to where we started - we still don't know what it is, exactly, that a believer misses out on if they don't take the "Real Presence" in communion, and hence WHY the Eucharist bread and wine HAVE TO be the real body and blood of Jesus in the first place, instead of being a symbol or memorial. Therefore, your church (as well as Roman Catholicism) isn't making a very good case at all why the "Real Presence" view is a salvivic one, and therefore mandatory in your church. That's my whole point here.

---

You almost certainly believe faith normally comes through hearing the preached word, Romans 10:17, "faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ." That's the ordinary means God appointed. But you wouldn't say someone who never heard a sermon or read Scripture, an infant, someone in a coma, someone in a remote place who dies before ever hearing the gospel, is automatically and definitely damned with zero exception, as though God's hands are tied by his own ordinary pattern. You'd probably say something like "God normally works through preaching, and in extraordinary cases he's not limited to it." That's exactly the structure I'm using for the Eucharist.

So it's not that I'm inventing a special escape hatch for my view. I'm using the same category you already use for how faith itself comes about: this is the real, appointed, ordinary means, without claiming to know God's exact judgment on every person who lacked access to it through no fault of their own. Those are two separate questions, and collapsing them into "well then nothing really matters" or "well then it's all just mandatory with no exceptions" isn't how you reason about your own doctrine of faith and preaching. Why would it suddenly become obfuscation only when the topic is communion?

You gotta understand normative means. Until you actually understand normative means as a category, you're going to keep hearing "this is really necessary in the ordinary case" and "God isn't limited to the ordinary case" as a contradiction, when they're not. This is also exactly why the thief on the cross can't be the model you build a normal doctrine of salvation on. He's the extraordinary exception, dying next to Christ himself, with no opportunity for baptism, preaching, or a church, not the pattern. Nobody sane builds their theology by saying "well the thief didn't need X, so X must not really matter." You'd never tell a congregation "don't worry about baptism, hearing the gospel, or the church, just look at the thief." He's proof God can save outside the ordinary means when circumstances make the ordinary means impossible, not proof the ordinary means are optional for everyone else.

---

If your answer is that normatively salvation is what's at stake so that you can account for that caveat, then that's fine. But the problem with this view is that Scripture clearly indicates it isn't "normatively" the case at all.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Here we go again, folks. They can't answer my question or argue with substance, so they try to redirect the conversation with a preachy attitude about my conversation method or other "character faults" they perceive. It never fails.

If Doc won't answer me, then can any other Orthodox/Roman Catholic actually address what I'm asking? What exactly does a believer miss out on if they don't take communion with the "Real Presence" but rather with a symbolic/memorialist view? Be clear.

---

Hey I'm not on here all the time, you need to stop making demands like you have some kind of authority around here.

I gave you 6 paragraphs of reasoning that you ignored, but we can go straight to Paul:

Hebrews 13:9-15. Paul contrasts the animals sacrificed by Israel at the tabernacle with what we have, which is an altar that those who serve the tent have no right to eat from. He calls it an altar, with a sacrifice, contrasted to the symbolic sacrifices of the animals.

Then he says "let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God." Do you know what that word is there, sacrifice of praise? Eucharistia. The whole passage is about the superiority of our Eucharistic offering and meal that we eat versus what the Jews eat at the tabernacle, the animals.

Your reformed position forces you to take the equivalent to Old Testament symbolism, but that's exactly what Paul is contrasting it against. He's not saying the way to eat non carnally is without your mouth, because he says we eat at an altar. You don't have an altar in your theology. So what are you actually eating or even doing?

If it were symbolic, Hebrews wouldn't need to build the whole case on continuity with tabernacle categories. It would just tell you to stop sacrificing and start believing. Instead it tells you the sacrifice continues, just transformed.

Paul says the same thing in 1 Corinthians 10, "the bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?" Participation (koinonia) is stronger than remembrance. You don't participate in a symbol. So concretely, what's missed is this: real, ongoing union with Christ's actual life through the physical means he appointed, not a mental exercise about a past event. The whole logic of the Incarnation is that God saves us through matter, not around it. Water really regenerates in baptism, oil really heals in anointing, and bread and wine really become his body and blood, because God doesn't leave matter behind when he saves us, he sanctifies it and works through it

---

You're STILL not answering the question. You've gotten lost and are now arguing something different.

I'll try again: what exactly does a believer miss out on if they don't take communion with the "Real Presence" but rather with a symbolic/memorialist view? You quoted Jesus in John 6:53 as your "answer" - so then explain: what is this verse saying about what that believer misses out on? Tell us exactly. Be clear.

---

What's missed is real, ongoing union with Christ's actual life through the physical means he appointed. You don't have that because you deny its physical.

---

But... what does that mean? What does it entail, in REAL terms? What is a believer who is not in an "ongoing union with Christ's actual life through physical means" actually missing or in danger of?

You're only replacing unclear language with more unclear language.

---

Its very clear and you're the one refusing to answer my questions. You demand answers from me and refuse to answer questions just asked to you.

It entails multiple things: bodily resurrection, healing, and abiding.

---

I'm not refusing to answer your questions, I'm trying to keep you focused on the issue I raised at the beginning, so I'm narrowing the attention to that specific point, because you keep running away from it and hiding that fact by writing long posts and asking your own set of questions. I have to keep the focus on the relevant point for the sake of clarity.

So, regarding your answers here (which you could have just clearly given from the beginning, but instead you made me go through the whole rigamarole of getting you to focus and honestly answer the question): bodily resurrection, healing, and abiding. Obviously, healing and abiding are not isolated to only those who take the "Real Presence" in communion. So I'm not sure how you can even argue that these are what a believer would miss out on simply by taking the symbolic/memorialist view of communion, or by not taking communion at all. That leaves "bodily resurrection", which ultimately means salvation to eternal life. Meaning specifically, that a person who believes in the Gospel and places their full trust in Jesus for their salvation, but who does NOT take the "Real Presence" in communion, is still NOT SAVED. This clearly is false. It falsifies everything we know from Scripture about salvation. The people in Scripture who we know got saved, like the thief on the cross, the sinful woman of Luke 7, and the house of Cornelius, ATE NOTHING. You'd even have to say that the house of Cornelius, even after believing the gospel, receiving the Holy Spirit, and getting water baptized, if they were to die right afterwards, they would NOT be saved because they didn't physically consume communion bread and wine. Any rational believer can easily see that this is totally absurd and just isn't supported in Scripture.

A believer who does not ever take communion or who does not take the "Real Presence" view, has absolutely nothing to worry about missing resurrection or salvation. In the very same chapter where Jesus says "whoever eats my flesh, I will raise him up on the last day" Jesus also says:

"For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day."

So if your view has it where someone can be a believer, but NOT have eternal life and NOT be raised (as yours does), then your view directly contradicts the words of Jesus, directly contradicts Scripture, and thus, simply isn't tenable.

I am amazed that there are those who call themselves "Christian" who actually believe that God is going to make a person's eternal fate not based on what's truly in their hearts, but rather completely contingent upon what they're able to physically put in their stomachs. If you truly believe this, then you don't know the character of God, and you just don't understand the Gospel.

---

I go into detail because this is more complex than you realize, and you've never really dealt with Eastern Christianity, it's a radically different framework than the West. Christianity developed primarily in the eastern world, not the Latin world.

I can tell you don't have a clue what argument or what my position actually is, because you think I'm making a claim that those who don't partake in the Eucharist are automatically damned. Orthodoxy doesn't claim people outside the Church or without access to the Eucharist are automatically damned. We don't claim to know the boundaries of God's mercy that precisely, only that the Church has been given the fullness of the means of grace. That's a Roman Catholic caricature you're arguing against, not the Orthodox position.

Eastern Christianity is relational. Latin/Western Christianity (you) is transactional, built on legal categories: guilt, merit, satisfaction, a ledger that gets balanced. That's why the reformation happened, Rome got hyper transactional, and guess what…you're hyper transactional too! Just look at your response to me.

This confuses you because you're looking for a marker, a specific criteria or event that flips your status. That reasoning doesn't show up until after the medieval West. It's nominalist: salvation as a legal declaration applied at a single point, based on one transaction, belief as a mental act.

I don't think in single markers, and neither did anyone in the time of Christ and the apostles. Salvation is union with Christ that begins, grows, and is sustained, not a status acquired once and carried around regardless of what follows. Baptism, chrismation, the Eucharist, ongoing repentance, these aren't hoops bolted onto "real" salvation. They're the actual life of being joined to Christ, the way a marriage isn't just the vow, it's the whole ongoing union the vow inaugurates.

---

But you JUST said that what the believer will miss if they don't take the "Real Presence" communion meal is resurrection, i.e. salvation. And now you're hedging on it, and thus retreating away from clarity and back into obfuscation. And now we're back to where we started - we still don't know what it is, exactly, that a believer misses out on if they don't take the "Real Presence" in communion, and hence WHY the Eucharist bread and wine HAVE TO be the real body and blood of Jesus in the first place, instead of being a symbol or memorial. Therefore, your church (as well as Roman Catholicism) isn't making a very good case at all why the "Real Presence" view is a salvivic one, and therefore mandatory in your church. That's my whole point here.

---

You almost certainly believe faith normally comes through hearing the preached word, Romans 10:17, "faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ." That's the ordinary means God appointed. But you wouldn't say someone who never heard a sermon or read Scripture, an infant, someone in a coma, someone in a remote place who dies before ever hearing the gospel, is automatically and definitely damned with zero exception, as though God's hands are tied by his own ordinary pattern. You'd probably say something like "God normally works through preaching, and in extraordinary cases he's not limited to it." That's exactly the structure I'm using for the Eucharist.

So it's not that I'm inventing a special escape hatch for my view. I'm using the same category you already use for how faith itself comes about: this is the real, appointed, ordinary means, without claiming to know God's exact judgment on every person who lacked access to it through no fault of their own. Those are two separate questions, and collapsing them into "well then nothing really matters" or "well then it's all just mandatory with no exceptions" isn't how you reason about your own doctrine of faith and preaching. Why would it suddenly become obfuscation only when the topic is communion?

You gotta understand normative means. Until you actually understand normative means as a category, you're going to keep hearing "this is really necessary in the ordinary case" and "God isn't limited to the ordinary case" as a contradiction, when they're not. This is also exactly why the thief on the cross can't be the model you build a normal doctrine of salvation on. He's the extraordinary exception, dying next to Christ himself, with no opportunity for baptism, preaching, or a church, not the pattern. Nobody sane builds their theology by saying "well the thief didn't need X, so X must not really matter." You'd never tell a congregation "don't worry about baptism, hearing the gospel, or the church, just look at the thief." He's proof God can save outside the ordinary means when circumstances make the ordinary means impossible, not proof the ordinary means are optional for everyone else.

---

If your answer is that normatively salvation is what's at stake so that you can account for that caveat, then that's fine. But the problem with this view is that Scripture clearly indicates it isn't "normatively" the case at all.

---

That's an assertion you haven't backed up. You keep making claims without explaining why.

John 6 repeats the literal eating language five separate times, and the crowd's reaction (offense, walking away) is described as the reasonable response to a genuinely hard, literal teaching. You have to explain why the text repeats itself that insistently if it means something softer than what it says, and why Jesus doesn't correct or soften it when people leave.

Hebrews 13:9-15: Paul builds a direct comparison, altar to altar, sacrifice to sacrifice, eating to eating, between the Old Covenant priests and Christians. He says we "have an altar" the tabernacle priests "have no right to eat from." Prove that's symbolic. Explain why exclusion language ("no right to eat") applies to something merely figurative, when you can't be excluded from a metaphor. And explain why eucharistia, ritual offering language, shows up in the middle of a passage saturated with cultic vocabulary (priest, altar, sacrifice, blood, sanctify) if the whole point was just verbal thanksgiving.

Don't just assert Scripture is clear here. Show me, from the actual wording of these two passages, where the literal reading breaks down and the symbolic reading is required.

Do ya'll understand Hebrews 13?

Paul is contrasting what we (Christians) eat at the altar, versus what the Jews eat at the tabernacle.

The Old Covenant priests ate from animal sacrifices at the tabernacle, that's the plain meaning of verses 10-11. Then verse 10 says "we have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat."

Then verse 15 says to "offer up a sacrifice of praise." The word there is eucharistia. It's not just "say thanks." In this context, surrounded by altar, sacrifice, blood, and priesthood language, it's ritual offering vocabulary. Paul isn't randomly switching from physical categories to a purely mental one mid-paragraph. He's naming the new sacrifice that replaces the old one.

The whole passage only makes sense as priesthood-to-priesthood, altar-to-altar, sacrifice-to-sacrifice, eating-to-eating. If the Christian side of that comparison is just an inward feeling of gratitude, the contrast falls apart and doesn't make sense, because you'd be comparing a real, physical, exclusionary system to something anyone can do regardless of church membership. That's not what the text sets up. It sets up two competing systems, and says ours is better and still ours to eat from.

Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Here we go again, folks. They can't answer my question or argue with substance, so they try to redirect the conversation with a preachy attitude about my conversation method or other "character faults" they perceive. It never fails.

If Doc won't answer me, then can any other Orthodox/Roman Catholic actually address what I'm asking? What exactly does a believer miss out on if they don't take communion with the "Real Presence" but rather with a symbolic/memorialist view? Be clear.

---

Hey I'm not on here all the time, you need to stop making demands like you have some kind of authority around here.

I gave you 6 paragraphs of reasoning that you ignored, but we can go straight to Paul:

Hebrews 13:9-15. Paul contrasts the animals sacrificed by Israel at the tabernacle with what we have, which is an altar that those who serve the tent have no right to eat from. He calls it an altar, with a sacrifice, contrasted to the symbolic sacrifices of the animals.

Then he says "let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God." Do you know what that word is there, sacrifice of praise? Eucharistia. The whole passage is about the superiority of our Eucharistic offering and meal that we eat versus what the Jews eat at the tabernacle, the animals.

Your reformed position forces you to take the equivalent to Old Testament symbolism, but that's exactly what Paul is contrasting it against. He's not saying the way to eat non carnally is without your mouth, because he says we eat at an altar. You don't have an altar in your theology. So what are you actually eating or even doing?

If it were symbolic, Hebrews wouldn't need to build the whole case on continuity with tabernacle categories. It would just tell you to stop sacrificing and start believing. Instead it tells you the sacrifice continues, just transformed.

Paul says the same thing in 1 Corinthians 10, "the bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?" Participation (koinonia) is stronger than remembrance. You don't participate in a symbol. So concretely, what's missed is this: real, ongoing union with Christ's actual life through the physical means he appointed, not a mental exercise about a past event. The whole logic of the Incarnation is that God saves us through matter, not around it. Water really regenerates in baptism, oil really heals in anointing, and bread and wine really become his body and blood, because God doesn't leave matter behind when he saves us, he sanctifies it and works through it

---

You're STILL not answering the question. You've gotten lost and are now arguing something different.

I'll try again: what exactly does a believer miss out on if they don't take communion with the "Real Presence" but rather with a symbolic/memorialist view? You quoted Jesus in John 6:53 as your "answer" - so then explain: what is this verse saying about what that believer misses out on? Tell us exactly. Be clear.

---

What's missed is real, ongoing union with Christ's actual life through the physical means he appointed. You don't have that because you deny its physical.

---

But... what does that mean? What does it entail, in REAL terms? What is a believer who is not in an "ongoing union with Christ's actual life through physical means" actually missing or in danger of?

You're only replacing unclear language with more unclear language.

---

Its very clear and you're the one refusing to answer my questions. You demand answers from me and refuse to answer questions just asked to you.

It entails multiple things: bodily resurrection, healing, and abiding.

---

I'm not refusing to answer your questions, I'm trying to keep you focused on the issue I raised at the beginning, so I'm narrowing the attention to that specific point, because you keep running away from it and hiding that fact by writing long posts and asking your own set of questions. I have to keep the focus on the relevant point for the sake of clarity.

So, regarding your answers here (which you could have just clearly given from the beginning, but instead you made me go through the whole rigamarole of getting you to focus and honestly answer the question): bodily resurrection, healing, and abiding. Obviously, healing and abiding are not isolated to only those who take the "Real Presence" in communion. So I'm not sure how you can even argue that these are what a believer would miss out on simply by taking the symbolic/memorialist view of communion, or by not taking communion at all. That leaves "bodily resurrection", which ultimately means salvation to eternal life. Meaning specifically, that a person who believes in the Gospel and places their full trust in Jesus for their salvation, but who does NOT take the "Real Presence" in communion, is still NOT SAVED. This clearly is false. It falsifies everything we know from Scripture about salvation. The people in Scripture who we know got saved, like the thief on the cross, the sinful woman of Luke 7, and the house of Cornelius, ATE NOTHING. You'd even have to say that the house of Cornelius, even after believing the gospel, receiving the Holy Spirit, and getting water baptized, if they were to die right afterwards, they would NOT be saved because they didn't physically consume communion bread and wine. Any rational believer can easily see that this is totally absurd and just isn't supported in Scripture.

A believer who does not ever take communion or who does not take the "Real Presence" view, has absolutely nothing to worry about missing resurrection or salvation. In the very same chapter where Jesus says "whoever eats my flesh, I will raise him up on the last day" Jesus also says:

"For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day."

So if your view has it where someone can be a believer, but NOT have eternal life and NOT be raised (as yours does), then your view directly contradicts the words of Jesus, directly contradicts Scripture, and thus, simply isn't tenable.

I am amazed that there are those who call themselves "Christian" who actually believe that God is going to make a person's eternal fate not based on what's truly in their hearts, but rather completely contingent upon what they're able to physically put in their stomachs. If you truly believe this, then you don't know the character of God, and you just don't understand the Gospel.

---

I go into detail because this is more complex than you realize, and you've never really dealt with Eastern Christianity, it's a radically different framework than the West. Christianity developed primarily in the eastern world, not the Latin world.

I can tell you don't have a clue what argument or what my position actually is, because you think I'm making a claim that those who don't partake in the Eucharist are automatically damned. Orthodoxy doesn't claim people outside the Church or without access to the Eucharist are automatically damned. We don't claim to know the boundaries of God's mercy that precisely, only that the Church has been given the fullness of the means of grace. That's a Roman Catholic caricature you're arguing against, not the Orthodox position.

Eastern Christianity is relational. Latin/Western Christianity (you) is transactional, built on legal categories: guilt, merit, satisfaction, a ledger that gets balanced. That's why the reformation happened, Rome got hyper transactional, and guess what…you're hyper transactional too! Just look at your response to me.

This confuses you because you're looking for a marker, a specific criteria or event that flips your status. That reasoning doesn't show up until after the medieval West. It's nominalist: salvation as a legal declaration applied at a single point, based on one transaction, belief as a mental act.

I don't think in single markers, and neither did anyone in the time of Christ and the apostles. Salvation is union with Christ that begins, grows, and is sustained, not a status acquired once and carried around regardless of what follows. Baptism, chrismation, the Eucharist, ongoing repentance, these aren't hoops bolted onto "real" salvation. They're the actual life of being joined to Christ, the way a marriage isn't just the vow, it's the whole ongoing union the vow inaugurates.

---

But you JUST said that what the believer will miss if they don't take the "Real Presence" communion meal is resurrection, i.e. salvation. And now you're hedging on it, and thus retreating away from clarity and back into obfuscation. And now we're back to where we started - we still don't know what it is, exactly, that a believer misses out on if they don't take the "Real Presence" in communion, and hence WHY the Eucharist bread and wine HAVE TO be the real body and blood of Jesus in the first place, instead of being a symbol or memorial. Therefore, your church (as well as Roman Catholicism) isn't making a very good case at all why the "Real Presence" view is a salvivic one, and therefore mandatory in your church. That's my whole point here.

---

You almost certainly believe faith normally comes through hearing the preached word, Romans 10:17, "faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ." That's the ordinary means God appointed. But you wouldn't say someone who never heard a sermon or read Scripture, an infant, someone in a coma, someone in a remote place who dies before ever hearing the gospel, is automatically and definitely damned with zero exception, as though God's hands are tied by his own ordinary pattern. You'd probably say something like "God normally works through preaching, and in extraordinary cases he's not limited to it." That's exactly the structure I'm using for the Eucharist.

So it's not that I'm inventing a special escape hatch for my view. I'm using the same category you already use for how faith itself comes about: this is the real, appointed, ordinary means, without claiming to know God's exact judgment on every person who lacked access to it through no fault of their own. Those are two separate questions, and collapsing them into "well then nothing really matters" or "well then it's all just mandatory with no exceptions" isn't how you reason about your own doctrine of faith and preaching. Why would it suddenly become obfuscation only when the topic is communion?

You gotta understand normative means. Until you actually understand normative means as a category, you're going to keep hearing "this is really necessary in the ordinary case" and "God isn't limited to the ordinary case" as a contradiction, when they're not. This is also exactly why the thief on the cross can't be the model you build a normal doctrine of salvation on. He's the extraordinary exception, dying next to Christ himself, with no opportunity for baptism, preaching, or a church, not the pattern. Nobody sane builds their theology by saying "well the thief didn't need X, so X must not really matter." You'd never tell a congregation "don't worry about baptism, hearing the gospel, or the church, just look at the thief." He's proof God can save outside the ordinary means when circumstances make the ordinary means impossible, not proof the ordinary means are optional for everyone else.

---

In fact, that is EXACTLY what they do. A very minimalist, justclose eyes and say one time i believe and youre good. Just look at thief!

Theyre even confused about where he went that day with Jesus.

Fre3dombear said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Here we go again, folks. They can't answer my question or argue with substance, so they try to redirect the conversation with a preachy attitude about my conversation method or other "character faults" they perceive. It never fails.

If Doc won't answer me, then can any other Orthodox/Roman Catholic actually address what I'm asking? What exactly does a believer miss out on if they don't take communion with the "Real Presence" but rather with a symbolic/memorialist view? Be clear.

---

Hey I'm not on here all the time, you need to stop making demands like you have some kind of authority around here.

I gave you 6 paragraphs of reasoning that you ignored, but we can go straight to Paul:

Hebrews 13:9-15. Paul contrasts the animals sacrificed by Israel at the tabernacle with what we have, which is an altar that those who serve the tent have no right to eat from. He calls it an altar, with a sacrifice, contrasted to the symbolic sacrifices of the animals.

Then he says "let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God." Do you know what that word is there, sacrifice of praise? Eucharistia. The whole passage is about the superiority of our Eucharistic offering and meal that we eat versus what the Jews eat at the tabernacle, the animals.

Your reformed position forces you to take the equivalent to Old Testament symbolism, but that's exactly what Paul is contrasting it against. He's not saying the way to eat non carnally is without your mouth, because he says we eat at an altar. You don't have an altar in your theology. So what are you actually eating or even doing?

If it were symbolic, Hebrews wouldn't need to build the whole case on continuity with tabernacle categories. It would just tell you to stop sacrificing and start believing. Instead it tells you the sacrifice continues, just transformed.

Paul says the same thing in 1 Corinthians 10, "the bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?" Participation (koinonia) is stronger than remembrance. You don't participate in a symbol. So concretely, what's missed is this: real, ongoing union with Christ's actual life through the physical means he appointed, not a mental exercise about a past event. The whole logic of the Incarnation is that God saves us through matter, not around it. Water really regenerates in baptism, oil really heals in anointing, and bread and wine really become his body and blood, because God doesn't leave matter behind when he saves us, he sanctifies it and works through it

---

You're STILL not answering the question. You've gotten lost and are now arguing something different.

I'll try again: what exactly does a believer miss out on if they don't take communion with the "Real Presence" but rather with a symbolic/memorialist view? You quoted Jesus in John 6:53 as your "answer" - so then explain: what is this verse saying about what that believer misses out on? Tell us exactly. Be clear.

---

What's missed is real, ongoing union with Christ's actual life through the physical means he appointed. You don't have that because you deny its physical.

---

But... what does that mean? What does it entail, in REAL terms? What is a believer who is not in an "ongoing union with Christ's actual life through physical means" actually missing or in danger of?

You're only replacing unclear language with more unclear language.

---

Its very clear and you're the one refusing to answer my questions. You demand answers from me and refuse to answer questions just asked to you.

It entails multiple things: bodily resurrection, healing, and abiding.

---

I'm not refusing to answer your questions, I'm trying to keep you focused on the issue I raised at the beginning, so I'm narrowing the attention to that specific point, because you keep running away from it and hiding that fact by writing long posts and asking your own set of questions. I have to keep the focus on the relevant point for the sake of clarity.

So, regarding your answers here (which you could have just clearly given from the beginning, but instead you made me go through the whole rigamarole of getting you to focus and honestly answer the question): bodily resurrection, healing, and abiding. Obviously, healing and abiding are not isolated to only those who take the "Real Presence" in communion. So I'm not sure how you can even argue that these are what a believer would miss out on simply by taking the symbolic/memorialist view of communion, or by not taking communion at all. That leaves "bodily resurrection", which ultimately means salvation to eternal life. Meaning specifically, that a person who believes in the Gospel and places their full trust in Jesus for their salvation, but who does NOT take the "Real Presence" in communion, is still NOT SAVED. This clearly is false. It falsifies everything we know from Scripture about salvation. The people in Scripture who we know got saved, like the thief on the cross, the sinful woman of Luke 7, and the house of Cornelius, ATE NOTHING. You'd even have to say that the house of Cornelius, even after believing the gospel, receiving the Holy Spirit, and getting water baptized, if they were to die right afterwards, they would NOT be saved because they didn't physically consume communion bread and wine. Any rational believer can easily see that this is totally absurd and just isn't supported in Scripture.

A believer who does not ever take communion or who does not take the "Real Presence" view, has absolutely nothing to worry about missing resurrection or salvation. In the very same chapter where Jesus says "whoever eats my flesh, I will raise him up on the last day" Jesus also says:

"For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day."

So if your view has it where someone can be a believer, but NOT have eternal life and NOT be raised (as yours does), then your view directly contradicts the words of Jesus, directly contradicts Scripture, and thus, simply isn't tenable.

I am amazed that there are those who call themselves "Christian" who actually believe that God is going to make a person's eternal fate not based on what's truly in their hearts, but rather completely contingent upon what they're able to physically put in their stomachs. If you truly believe this, then you don't know the character of God, and you just don't understand the Gospel.

---

I go into detail because this is more complex than you realize, and you've never really dealt with Eastern Christianity, it's a radically different framework than the West. Christianity developed primarily in the eastern world, not the Latin world.

I can tell you don't have a clue what argument or what my position actually is, because you think I'm making a claim that those who don't partake in the Eucharist are automatically damned. Orthodoxy doesn't claim people outside the Church or without access to the Eucharist are automatically damned. We don't claim to know the boundaries of God's mercy that precisely, only that the Church has been given the fullness of the means of grace. That's a Roman Catholic caricature you're arguing against, not the Orthodox position.

Eastern Christianity is relational. Latin/Western Christianity (you) is transactional, built on legal categories: guilt, merit, satisfaction, a ledger that gets balanced. That's why the reformation happened, Rome got hyper transactional, and guess what…you're hyper transactional too! Just look at your response to me.

This confuses you because you're looking for a marker, a specific criteria or event that flips your status. That reasoning doesn't show up until after the medieval West. It's nominalist: salvation as a legal declaration applied at a single point, based on one transaction, belief as a mental act.

I don't think in single markers, and neither did anyone in the time of Christ and the apostles. Salvation is union with Christ that begins, grows, and is sustained, not a status acquired once and carried around regardless of what follows. Baptism, chrismation, the Eucharist, ongoing repentance, these aren't hoops bolted onto "real" salvation. They're the actual life of being joined to Christ, the way a marriage isn't just the vow, it's the whole ongoing union the vow inaugurates.

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But you JUST said that what the believer will miss if they don't take the "Real Presence" communion meal is resurrection, i.e. salvation. And now you're hedging on it, and thus retreating away from clarity and back into obfuscation. And now we're back to where we started - we still don't know what it is, exactly, that a believer misses out on if they don't take the "Real Presence" in communion, and hence WHY the Eucharist bread and wine HAVE TO be the real body and blood of Jesus in the first place, instead of being a symbol or memorial. Therefore, your church (as well as Roman Catholicism) isn't making a very good case at all why the "Real Presence" view is a salvivic one, and therefore mandatory in your church. That's my whole point here.

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You almost certainly believe faith normally comes through hearing the preached word, Romans 10:17, "faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ." That's the ordinary means God appointed. But you wouldn't say someone who never heard a sermon or read Scripture, an infant, someone in a coma, someone in a remote place who dies before ever hearing the gospel, is automatically and definitely damned with zero exception, as though God's hands are tied by his own ordinary pattern. You'd probably say something like "God normally works through preaching, and in extraordinary cases he's not limited to it." That's exactly the structure I'm using for the Eucharist.

So it's not that I'm inventing a special escape hatch for my view. I'm using the same category you already use for how faith itself comes about: this is the real, appointed, ordinary means, without claiming to know God's exact judgment on every person who lacked access to it through no fault of their own. Those are two separate questions, and collapsing them into "well then nothing really matters" or "well then it's all just mandatory with no exceptions" isn't how you reason about your own doctrine of faith and preaching. Why would it suddenly become obfuscation only when the topic is communion?

You gotta understand normative means. Until you actually understand normative means as a category, you're going to keep hearing "this is really necessary in the ordinary case" and "God isn't limited to the ordinary case" as a contradiction, when they're not. This is also exactly why the thief on the cross can't be the model you build a normal doctrine of salvation on. He's the extraordinary exception, dying next to Christ himself, with no opportunity for baptism, preaching, or a church, not the pattern. Nobody sane builds their theology by saying "well the thief didn't need X, so X must not really matter." You'd never tell a congregation "don't worry about baptism, hearing the gospel, or the church, just look at the thief." He's proof God can save outside the ordinary means when circumstances make the ordinary means impossible, not proof the ordinary means are optional for everyone else.

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In fact, that is EXACTLY what they do. A very minimalist, justclose eyes and say one time i believe and youre good. Just look at thief!

Theyre even confused about where he went that day with Jesus.

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Everything for both Protestants and Orthodox/Catholic is downstream of the root problem.

Protestants are taught the root problem is sin. It's not.
The root problem is that communion with God was severed. The root problem, going back to Genesis 3, isn't a legal violation incurred at a point in time, it's separation from the source of life. Adam and Eve don't get a debt added to a ledger, they get cut off from the tree of life and start dying, physically and spiritually. Death/corruption enter because communion was severed, sin then flows out of that severed condition, it's the fruit, not the root.

That's why the salvation between us looks radically different. If sin-as-debt is the root problem, the solution is a legal transaction, payment, satisfaction, imputed righteousness, a verdict. If severed communion is the root problem, the solution has to be an actual restoration of union, God entering human nature in the Incarnation, defeating death from within by dying and rising, and then continually feeding and sustaining that restored union through baptism, chrismation, the Eucharist, ongoing repentance. Sin still matters enormously in this framework, it's exactly what damages and can rupture that restored communion again, that's why confession and repentance are so central to Orthodox life. But sin is treated as the wound, not the crime, and the cure is healing and reunion, not an acquittal.

This is why we see the thief differently. He's proof the one-time event is all that's needed, say it, mean it, done, heaven guaranteed on the spot. It's a genuinely bad thing to build a template out of. If you're going to live decades, and the entire depth of your relationship with Christ amounts to what the thief had in his final hour, you're not going to be judged the same as him, because you had the time, the means, and the opportunity he didn't. His case is mercy shown to someone with nothing left to give and no time to grow. Teaching "the thief just said it and got in, so that's all any of us need" as a lifelong model isn't extending grace, it's flattening decades of real relationship into the same measure as a man's final few minutes, and that's not how God actually deals with people who've had a whole life to either grow toward him or coast on a one time moment.

Also, the Orthodox/Catholic faith doesn't jive with worldly practices.

Modern life is saturated with instant transactions, click to buy, terms accepted, done, and that basically trains a certain expectation: solve the problem, get the receipt, move on. A legal/contractual model of salvation fits that instinct perfectly: say the prayer, accept the terms, transaction complete, certainty secured. It's legible, fast, and closes the loop.

A relational model resists that by nature, relationships don't close, they're ongoing, they require continued presence, they can be damaged and need tending, and they don't come with a receipt you can point to and say "done." That's actually harder to sell in a culture trained on instant resolution, which is maybe part of why the transactional framing spread so successfully in revivalist and modern evangelicalism, it's not just theologically motivated, it's compatible with how people already want problems to work.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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BUDOS said:

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As you can't see, your response to me, and to some others recently and in my past, only weaken your argument. You are responding exactly as I said you would. You keep forgetting that just because you say something is so doesn't make it so.

As much as you believe you can decide/judge someone is right or wrong and that is the final judgement, that is part of your apparent personality disorder, which I noted previously. Most of your responses are textbook examples of your issue, and those responses which immensely diminishes their credibility and content.
Good luck with sounding credible with your repeated deflective efforts. Perhaps it's part of your efforts to protect your core beliefs &/or your ego. Again I appreciate your compliment in the response previous to your last one.

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^^^^ ding, ding, ding! There it is, just as I said!!

I'll repeat what I posted earlier:
"Here we go again, folks. They can't answer my question or argue with substance, so they try to redirect the conversation with a preachy attitude about my conversation method or other "character faults" they perceive. It never fails."

You don't like what I'm arguing, so you're resorting to your usual tactic of "weakening my argument" not by actually arguing against its merits, but by attacking my person. Like clockwork, just as I said. Only flawed, weak minds do this or buy into it.

If you are realy compelled to continue impeding constructive dialogue and clarity as you usually do, please make it brief. If you want to continue to push for dialogue where it's just people breathing hot air past each other and going home feeling good about their beliefs which may be false, then you're free to seek that kind of dialogue. However, some of us would actually like to pursue the truth, and with clarity.

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BTD,
Recognizing that you may not agree, my goal is not to label you or judge your faith, but to explain certain patterns I have observed in our discussions. I am describing behaviors, not your character or your sincerity.

Based on many of your responses, such as this one, you appear to be someone who uses religious knowledge, authority, or spiritual language in ways that protect your ego, elevate yourself, or silence disagreement. It does not mean you lack intelligence or sincerity. It means your reactions in religious discussions often revolve around defending your status rather than exploring Scripture together. Often, in my opinion, you

Almost always react defensively when your interpretation is questioned.
Shift the discussion from Scripture to the other person's motives or spiritual maturity.
Appear to frame disagreement as disrespect, rebellion, or lack of spirituality.
Become offensive or condescending when your authority feels threatened.

I'm mentioning this because there is value in such discussions, and I think your knowledge is significant. However, sometimes the tone or reaction you use makes it difficult to stay focused on Scripture itself. When the conversation shifts from the text to defending your authority or correcting my/our motives, attacking our intelligence, the biblical discussion gets overshadowed.

I hope you will respond, and I'm not asking nor expecting you to agree with my description, only to consider it. You can respond to the definition, the behaviors, or the way these patterns might appear in discussions. My hope is that we can all continue talking about Scripture with clarity and mutual respect.

I'm not speaking for BTD, Doc, but I would like to respond to your post:

"Everything for both Protestants and Orthodox/Catholic is downstream of the root problem."

Ironically, I believe you and BTD agree on that statement. You disagree on what that root problem is, though.

"Protestants are taught the root problem is sin. It's not."

Another thing you and BTD share, is the habit of stating what someone else believes. Just as Orthodox Christianity is a bit more complex than the caricatures often portrayed in these debates, those attacking Protestant Christians often try to reduce Protestant doctrine to straw men they can easily attack.

Hence the constant bickering in threads like this one.

"That's why the salvation between us looks radically different."

In my experience, Salvation is intensely personal and often individual in the details, which are important to the character as well as the process.

It's that individual aspect of Salvation which I wish we could discuss instead of all those imitation lawyer rants we have seen.

Oldbear83 said:

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I'm not speaking for BTD, Doc, but I would like to respond to your post:

"Everything for both Protestants and Orthodox/Catholic is downstream of the root problem."

Ironically, I believe you and BTD agree on that statement. You disagree on what that root problem is, though.

"Protestants are taught the root problem is sin. It's not."

Another thing you and BTD share, is the habit of stating what someone else believes. Just as Orthodox Christianity is a bit more complex than the caricatures often portrayed in these debates, those attacking Protestant Christians often try to reduce Protestant doctrine to straw men they can easily attack.

Hence the constant bickering in threads like this one.

"That's why the salvation between us looks radically different."

In my experience, Salvation is intensely personal and often individual in the details, which are important to the character as well as the process.

It's that individual aspect of Salvation which I wish we could discuss instead of all those imitation lawyer rants we have seen.

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Oldbear, thank you for your post and the manner in which it is stated. In context, I think I pretty much agree with both key points, including the "ouch, you got me." I don't think it's a bullseye, but it's close enough.

Oldbear83 said:

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I'm not speaking for BTD, Doc, but I would like to respond to your post:

"Everything for both Protestants and Orthodox/Catholic is downstream of the root problem."

Ironically, I believe you and BTD agree on that statement. You disagree on what that root problem is, though.

"Protestants are taught the root problem is sin. It's not."

Another thing you and BTD share, is the habit of stating what someone else believes. Just as Orthodox Christianity is a bit more complex than the caricatures often portrayed in these debates, those attacking Protestant Christians often try to reduce Protestant doctrine to straw men they can easily attack.

Hence the constant bickering in threads like this one.

"That's why the salvation between us looks radically different."

In my experience, Salvation is intensely personal and often individual in the details, which are important to the character as well as the process.

It's that individual aspect of Salvation which I wish we could discuss instead of all those imitation lawyer rants we have seen.

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When I state what someone else believes, I'm going by their denomination's confession of faith, which is a very specific state of belief and theological positions.

We have to be specific though and I hope you would agree. There are people who claim to follow Christ, but deny the Holy Trinity for example. At that point, I literally can't consider them even remotely or genuinely Christian.

Do you understand that someone's basic beliefs can create MASSIVE implications downstream?

Doc: " I'm going by their denomination's confession of faith"

What you said was "Protestants", not any specific denomination's doctrinal statement.

So I must stand by my observation.

I expect you will count that as at least a partial victory, since you appear to prize a single, uniform statement for all Christians.

I see the matter as rather more complex. God made billions of individual humans, so I think it reasonable that a 'one size suits all' assumption misses a great many people.

Our Lord did not choose just one disciple and Scripture records multiple Gospel accounts in Canon, for reason.

I certainly agree that we need one foundation, but the Gospel is spread in many places and languages.

Oldbear83 said:

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Doc: " I'm going by their denomination's confession of faith"

What you said was "Protestants", not any specific denomination's doctrinal statement.

So I must stand by my observation.

I expect you will count that as at least a partial victory, since you appear to prize a single, uniform statement for all Christians.

I see the matter as rather more complex. God made billions of individual humans, so I think it reasonable that a 'one size suits all' assumption misses a great many people.

Our Lord did not choose just one disciple and Scripture records multiple Gospel accounts in Canon, for reason.

I certainly agree that we need one foundation, but the Gospel is spread in many places and languages.

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AS OF MAY 2026
801 TOTAL COMPLETED BIBLE Translations- over 1500 for just the new testiment
6.2 Billion people have access to the written word in a language in their region

Oldbear83 said:

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Doc: " I'm going by their denomination's confession of faith"

What you said was "Protestants", not any specific denomination's doctrinal statement.

So I must stand by my observation.

I expect you will count that as at least a partial victory, since you appear to prize a single, uniform statement for all Christians.

I see the matter as rather more complex. God made billions of individual humans, so I think it reasonable that a 'one size suits all' assumption misses a great many people.

Our Lord did not choose just one disciple and Scripture records multiple Gospel accounts in Canon, for reason.

I certainly agree that we need one foundation, but the Gospel is spread in many places and languages.

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Lol I don't consider Protestants one body at all. BTD argues from Calvinist/monergist positions. Those are radically different from other Protestants. Did you not read my statement about respecting the sacramental position that mainlines have?

Some of you guys hold arminian views, once saved, always saved, hyper grace etc. Those all started from different confessions and people: Luther, Calvin and Zwingli all held very different theological positions. Reformers quickly started killing each other over disagreements FYI…it's a ugly history and sad.

There's way more infighting and disagreement between Protestant denominations than prots vs. Orthodox/Catholics.

Th faith was once delivered and the path is narrow. It's important to find the truth. My journey to orthodoxy is one that took extreme humility: it wasn't what I wanted, I fought it until I couldn't deny it was the true Church and it's not easy to be Orthodox.

Try reading my post again, please.

Oldbear83 said:

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Try reading my post again, please.

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Dude I'm not going to play this game where you demand I and others be ecumenical, and if we don't, you start accusing us of ill intent.

If truth and error can coexist as different expressions of the same faith, then truth doesn't matter. I wholly reject that framework. I'm not interested in a version of Christianity where nobody's actually wrong about anything.

BUDOS said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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I'm not speaking for BTD, Doc, but I would like to respond to your post:

"Everything for both Protestants and Orthodox/Catholic is downstream of the root problem."

Ironically, I believe you and BTD agree on that statement. You disagree on what that root problem is, though.

"Protestants are taught the root problem is sin. It's not."

Another thing you and BTD share, is the habit of stating what someone else believes. Just as Orthodox Christianity is a bit more complex than the caricatures often portrayed in these debates, those attacking Protestant Christians often try to reduce Protestant doctrine to straw men they can easily attack.

Hence the constant bickering in threads like this one.

"That's why the salvation between us looks radically different."

In my experience, Salvation is intensely personal and often individual in the details, which are important to the character as well as the process.

It's that individual aspect of Salvation which I wish we could discuss instead of all those imitation lawyer rants we have seen.

---

Oldbear, thank you for your post and the manner in which it is stated. In context, I think I pretty much agree with both key points, including the "ouch, you got me." I don't think it's a bullseye, but it's close enough.

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You know BUDOS, I spent some time thinking yesterday. About fallen angels, of all things.

It occurred to me that God created the angels, just as He created all humans. And all the angels have names and personalities and character, just as humans do.

The reason that matters, is that all the fallen angels were at one time right with God, serving the Lord and jumping for joy at the Creation, per Genesis. Yet when Satan rebelled against God, he took with him one third of the angels (not any of the Seraphim, though - fascinating detail).

So there are all those fallen angels, who once were right with God, but who turned against Him and fell to their fates.

Now we know from Scripture that the angels are wiser, stronger and smarter than men, yet one third of the angels still rebelled against God and fell from Heaven.

I think about what that means for us poor dumb, reckless humans. And yet we were given Grace and Mercy from God, simply because God chose to love us.

I mention all this, because it sometimes seems as if we are expected to run some gauntlet and 'too bad' if we fail, as we always eventually do on our own strength and wit.

I wonder how many people understand that we are saved not because we figured something out or accomplished some task, but simply because God took pity on us and pulled us out of the mire.

Galatians 1:8-9 "But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed."

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Here we go again, folks. They can't answer my question or argue with substance, so they try to redirect the conversation with a preachy attitude about my conversation method or other "character faults" they perceive. It never fails.

If Doc won't answer me, then can any other Orthodox/Roman Catholic actually address what I'm asking? What exactly does a believer miss out on if they don't take communion with the "Real Presence" but rather with a symbolic/memorialist view? Be clear.

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Hey I'm not on here all the time, you need to stop making demands like you have some kind of authority around here.

I gave you 6 paragraphs of reasoning that you ignored, but we can go straight to Paul:

Hebrews 13:9-15. Paul contrasts the animals sacrificed by Israel at the tabernacle with what we have, which is an altar that those who serve the tent have no right to eat from. He calls it an altar, with a sacrifice, contrasted to the symbolic sacrifices of the animals.

Then he says "let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God." Do you know what that word is there, sacrifice of praise? Eucharistia. The whole passage is about the superiority of our Eucharistic offering and meal that we eat versus what the Jews eat at the tabernacle, the animals.

Your reformed position forces you to take the equivalent to Old Testament symbolism, but that's exactly what Paul is contrasting it against. He's not saying the way to eat non carnally is without your mouth, because he says we eat at an altar. You don't have an altar in your theology. So what are you actually eating or even doing?

If it were symbolic, Hebrews wouldn't need to build the whole case on continuity with tabernacle categories. It would just tell you to stop sacrificing and start believing. Instead it tells you the sacrifice continues, just transformed.

Paul says the same thing in 1 Corinthians 10, "the bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?" Participation (koinonia) is stronger than remembrance. You don't participate in a symbol. So concretely, what's missed is this: real, ongoing union with Christ's actual life through the physical means he appointed, not a mental exercise about a past event. The whole logic of the Incarnation is that God saves us through matter, not around it. Water really regenerates in baptism, oil really heals in anointing, and bread and wine really become his body and blood, because God doesn't leave matter behind when he saves us, he sanctifies it and works through it

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You're STILL not answering the question. You've gotten lost and are now arguing something different.

I'll try again: what exactly does a believer miss out on if they don't take communion with the "Real Presence" but rather with a symbolic/memorialist view? You quoted Jesus in John 6:53 as your "answer" - so then explain: what is this verse saying about what that believer misses out on? Tell us exactly. Be clear.

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What's missed is real, ongoing union with Christ's actual life through the physical means he appointed. You don't have that because you deny its physical.

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But... what does that mean? What does it entail, in REAL terms? What is a believer who is not in an "ongoing union with Christ's actual life through physical means" actually missing or in danger of?

You're only replacing unclear language with more unclear language.

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Its very clear and you're the one refusing to answer my questions. You demand answers from me and refuse to answer questions just asked to you.

It entails multiple things: bodily resurrection, healing, and abiding.

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The people in Scripture who we know got saved, like the thief on the cross, the sinful woman of Luke 7, and the house of Cornelius, ATE NOTHING. You'd even have to say that the house of Cornelius, even after believing the gospel, receiving the Holy Spirit, and getting water baptized, if they were to die right afterwards, they would NOT be saved because they didn't physically consume communion bread and wine. Any rational believer can easily see that this is totally absurd and just isn't supported in Scripture.

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And it's not what anyone believes.

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According to what he answered (and then hedged on, which I'm sure you're familiar with), yes, that's essentially what he said he believed.

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No, it isn't. This has been explained over and over again. The sacraments aren't a quota of works to be performed. They're a way of following Christ, for however long or short a time we're called to do so.

Doc Holliday said:

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Galatians 1:8-9 "But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed."

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And just who are you claiming is preaching 'any other gospel' in this forum?

So true.
It is by His grace and unconditional love. It's something of which we fall short, and many of us fall way short. As Paul says, we all fall short and all have sinned, yet He offers everyone the opportunity to seek forgiveness and have fellowship with Him for eternity, despite our ugliness. Perhaps we should do a better job of doing a better job of loving our neighbors, realizing that there are times we will yield to temptation.

BUDOS said:

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So true.
It is by His grace and unconditional love. It's something of which we fall short, and many of us fall way short. As Paul says, we all fall short and all have sinned, yet He offers everyone the opportunity to seek forgiveness and have fellowship with Him for eternity, despite our ugliness. Perhaps we should do a better job of doing a better job of loving our neighbors, realizing that there are times we will yield to temptation.

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Thanks BUDOS. I mentioned in my last post that the one group of angels which saw none of their number join Satan, were the Seraphim.

The Burning Ones.

That's because they were so committed to God, worshipping Him fully without ceasing, that there was nothing Satan could offer that they wanted or did not have.

It seems to me that this is the example we as Christians should follow, to desire Christ so completely in our lives that we have no need for human pride or the old life which saw us fail because of our decision to be independent instead of worthy servants.

It's not that such commitment would be merit, it's just that if you truly desire Christ in your life, that would truly be better than anything the world could offer or threaten to turn you from Him.

This is the part where Doc, Sam and others make the right argument about how we should live. Salvation is not a token you carry around with you and wave at the gates to get into Heaven; it's about growing closer to Christ every day, and finding joy in serving out of love.

The mistake some make on that, is making it a requirement, a legal thing.

If you truly love someone, you want to be around them and make them happy. If you love your vocation, you do it as well as possible and always strive to improve. If you are a musician or a singer, you seek to be on key, with perfect timing and clear presentation, not out of fear or because the conductor tells you to do so, but out of love for the music and your orchestra or choir.

As for my brothers and sisters in Christ, I am thrilled to see them grow in Christ, just as all believers are delighted to see one become a son or daughter who returns home to the Father.

As we all worship God tomorrow, I pray we will remember that some who seem different in appearance may in their souls be more our siblings than seems so here.