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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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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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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MY GOD... you literally are a brick wall. I've explained from Scripture and pure logic REPEATEDLY in this forum why salvation is NOT contingent on the literal eating and drinking of Jesus' flesh and blood. And none of you have any answer to them. You're just on repeat like a broken record, refusing to grasp a single thing that's been explained. Do I really need to repeat them for the umpteenth time?

Your position isn't making any sense. Explain exactly why the people left Jesus after he spoke those words in John 6. Why, precisely, were his words so offensive to them? If the repeating of these words indicates they didn't mean something "softer than what it says", then why not take the literal interpretation that the Roman Cathoilcs do, that it means we are to literally eat his literal flesh?? After all, those are the direct words in that verse, and you don't want to take them as meaning something softer, right?

Similarly, with your reference to Hebrews, if the author is making a point to point comparison between the old Temple sacrifices and Jesus' sacrifice, then why doesn't that mean that we are to physically eat Jesus' literal flesh as the Roman Catholics believe? You're making the argument for the Roman Catholic "Real Presence" view, rather than the Orthodox's, which is weird.

Explain this (because you seem to be destroying your own view) and I will go through the whole rigamarole of explaining why both your view and the Roman Catholic view is false... yet again.

Doc Holliday said:

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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.

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Apparently, you do not understand Hebrews 13 at all.

NOTHING in Hebrews 13 says that the communion bread and wine are the "Real Presence" of Jesus, or that communion/the Eucharist is the replacement "ceremony" for the church that is the necessary means for us to receive some kind of grace. Where it says "those who serve the tent (Old Covenant Jews who still perform animal sacrifices) have no right to eat", the "eating" there is not literal. He's making the point that the New Covenant involves a higher form of "eating" that the Old Covenant Jews rejected. The "eating" isn't physical. This is made obvious by reading the verse immediately prior:

"... for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them."

The author clearly is setting up the meaning of "eating" in the following verse in the mind of the reader to convey something higher and more significant than the physical ingestion of food.

Verse 15, which you reference, perfectly illustrates how the author is elevating the concepts of "eating" and "sacrifice" to go BEYOND, not be identical to, their meaning in the Old Covenant way:

"Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God."

It's really odd how you can read a verse thinking it makes your argument, when it completely destroys it. Clearly, this verse is saying that the "Eucharist" is NOT a sacrifice that involves the real, actual re-presentation of Jesus' sacrifice that is performed on an physical altar by human priests - but rather a "sacrifice" that comes from the heart of the believer in the form of thanksgiving, praise, obedience, and love for others. The very verse you offered as support for your view completely destroys it and fully supports the Protestant view instead.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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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.

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Apparently, you do not understand Hebrews 13 at all.

NOTHING in Hebrews 13 says that the communion bread and wine are the "Real Presence" of Jesus, or that communion/the Eucharist is the replacement "ceremony" for the church that is the necessary means for us to receive some kind of grace. Where it says "those who serve the tent (Old Covenant Jews who still perform animal sacrifices) have no right to eat", the "eating" there is not literal. He's making the point that the New Covenant involves a higher form of "eating" that the Old Covenant Jews rejected. The "eating" isn't physical. This is made obvious by reading the verse immediately prior:

"... for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them."

The author clearly is setting up the meaning of "eating" in the following verse in the mind of the reader to convey something higher and more significant than the physical ingestion of food.

Verse 15, which you reference, perfectly illustrates how the author is elevating the concepts of "eating" and "sacrifice" to go BEYOND, not be identical to, their meaning in the Old Covenant way:

"Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God."

It's really odd how you can read a verse thinking it makes your argument, when it completely destroys it. Clearly, this verse is saying that the "Eucharist" is NOT a sacrifice that involves the real, actual re-presentation of Jesus' sacrifice that is performed on an physical altar by human priests - but rather a "sacrifice" that comes from the heart of the believer in the form of thanksgiving, praise, obedience, and love for others. The very verse you offered as support for your view completely destroys it and fully supports the Protestant view instead.

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Here is the outline: don't slide back into ceremonial food law (v.9), we have a real altar you don't have access to (v.10), pointing to Christ's sacrifice outside the camp (v.11-13), and because of that we also offer praise and good works (v.15-16). That's addition, not swap. You've got cause and effect flipped, treating our response to the altar as if it erases the altar.

You've got the logic backwards. Verse 9's "foods" isn't saying eating in general is now some metaphor, it's talking about Jewish food laws, same thing Hebrews 9:10 already covers, "foods and drinks and various washings." It's saying don't get sucked back into Mosaic dietary rules, not "eating doesn't mean eating anymore."

Then verse 10 switches to a totally different image: an altar. "We have an altar those who serve the tent have no right to eat from." That keeps going with real priestly language, actual animals, actual blood, an actual high priest, burned outside the camp. The whole passage is set up as a parallel, their altar and eating vs. our altar and eating. If you want "eat" to suddenly mean something non-physical only on our side, you have to show me that in the text. You're just asserting it and it doesn't make any sense.

And verse 15 doesn't redefine verse 10, it adds to it. Nothing says "sacrifice of praise" replaces the altar. It's an extra exhortation, right next to verse 16's " do good and share." Those are the fruits that come from having the altar, not a reinterpretation that cancels it out. You're treating two separate things, the altar-eating in v.10 and the praise sacrifice in v.15, like the second one swallows the first. Hebrews never says that.

BUDOS said:

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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.

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"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."

*** Point to exactly where I did what you say.

I'm pretty certain that your perceptions are highly biased and flawed. Let me point out that STILL, you are trying to shift the attention to a person's character and motivations, rather than the substance of what is being said. And when called out on it, all you did was double down as you did here. This is literally ALL YOU HAVE DONE here. This is ALL you have ever contributed.

Like Doc said, there are people here who have this "no one is really wrong" approach, which is so far from being true. And you are definitely one of them. Since we're freely dispensing personal evaluations here as you're always doing: you want warm, fuzzy discussions where everyone goes home happy with their beliefs. You cower from the hard truth. That's the real danger, NOT anything I'm doing. You constantly intepret the telling of hard truth as being "disrespectful". You constantly try to shame and scold those who are trying to tell the hard truth to people who need to hear it, like you're some kind of school teacher wagging your finger at children. You want "clarity"? Like I already said, you have been an enemy to truth and to clarity here. There is something really, really wrong with people who call themselves "Christian" and do what you do. Do want me to prove everything I'm saying here? Shall I ask your opinions about the tough truths about Mary and Roman Catholicism again, which you cowered from?

By the way, your "thanking" those who post comments in the manner you approve of, in an obvious attempt to manipulate the discussion, is just so passive-aggressive and so, so pathetic and nauseating. Seriously, can you STOP with the patronizing and personality evaluations, and engage the actual merits of the discussion, if you're even able? If you really want me to "consider" your posts, then this is the route - it's definitely NOT through scolding by someone whose opinion I have no reason to respect.

Doc Holliday said:

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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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BTD argues from Calvinist/monergist positions.

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You obviously have not understood (or maybe even read) what I've been saying.

Doc Holliday said:

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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.

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On this, we completely agree. This is well said. It describes OldBear and BUDOS to a tee.

Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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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.

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Apparently, you do not understand Hebrews 13 at all.

NOTHING in Hebrews 13 says that the communion bread and wine are the "Real Presence" of Jesus, or that communion/the Eucharist is the replacement "ceremony" for the church that is the necessary means for us to receive some kind of grace. Where it says "those who serve the tent (Old Covenant Jews who still perform animal sacrifices) have no right to eat", the "eating" there is not literal. He's making the point that the New Covenant involves a higher form of "eating" that the Old Covenant Jews rejected. The "eating" isn't physical. This is made obvious by reading the verse immediately prior:

"... for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them."

The author clearly is setting up the meaning of "eating" in the following verse in the mind of the reader to convey something higher and more significant than the physical ingestion of food.

Verse 15, which you reference, perfectly illustrates how the author is elevating the concepts of "eating" and "sacrifice" to go BEYOND, not be identical to, their meaning in the Old Covenant way:

"Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God."

It's really odd how you can read a verse thinking it makes your argument, when it completely destroys it. Clearly, this verse is saying that the "Eucharist" is NOT a sacrifice that involves the real, actual re-presentation of Jesus' sacrifice that is performed on an physical altar by human priests - but rather a "sacrifice" that comes from the heart of the believer in the form of thanksgiving, praise, obedience, and love for others. The very verse you offered as support for your view completely destroys it and fully supports the Protestant view instead.

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Here is the outline: don't slide back into ceremonial food law (v.9), we have a real altar you don't have access to (v.10), pointing to Christ's sacrifice outside the camp (v.11-13), and because of that we also offer praise and good works (v.15-16). That's addition, not swap. You've got cause and effect flipped, treating our response to the altar as if it erases the altar.

You've got the logic backwards. Verse 9's "foods" isn't saying eating in general is now some metaphor, it's talking about Jewish food laws, same thing Hebrews 9:10 already covers, "foods and drinks and various washings." It's saying don't get sucked back into Mosaic dietary rules, not "eating doesn't mean eating anymore."

Then verse 10 switches to a totally different image: an altar. "We have an altar those who serve the tent have no right to eat from." That keeps going with real priestly language, actual animals, actual blood, an actual high priest, burned outside the camp. The whole passage is set up as a parallel, their altar and eating vs. our altar and eating. If you want "eat" to suddenly mean something non-physical only on our side, you have to show me that in the text. You're just asserting it and it doesn't make any sense.

And verse 15 doesn't redefine verse 10, it adds to it. Nothing says "sacrifice of praise" replaces the altar. It's an extra exhortation, right next to verse 16's " do good and share." Those are the fruits that come from having the altar, not a reinterpretation that cancels it out. You're treating two separate things, the altar-eating in v.10 and the praise sacrifice in v.15, like the second one swallows the first. Hebrews never says that.

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You're looking at this passage with confirmation bias through your Orthodox lens, so you're reading it as a prescription for the New Covenant church to have the same system of temples, priests, altars, sacrifices, and the physical eating of the sacrifice that was characteristic of the Old Covenant. But this is completely missing the point the author is making, and is in fact going backwards from what the author intended. That old system is obsolete. There is NO MORE SACRIFICE. Jesus' sacrifice on the cross was the finished, once-for-all-time sacrifice for all sins, past, present and future. It completely eliminates the need for any further sacrifice."It is finished". Similarly, there is no more temple, because God now resides in the hearts of believers. There is no more organizational priesthood, because Jesus is now our one, true Priest who intercedes for us directly with God, and we are the "priesthood of believers". There is no more sacrificial "altar" to atone for our sins, because the final sacrifice has already been made. And there is no more literal, physical eating of the sacrifice - the "eating" is what we do when we, by believing in Jesus, gain spiritual sustenance leading to eternal life, which is superior to physical eating, which only gives us physical sustenance towards physical, temporal life. The point of Hebrews was to show that the New Covenant is made superior to the Old - the Old was only a type, a shadow of what was to come. The "altar" and "eating" language the author uses in this chapter in reference to the New Covenant is describing a new, higher, spiritual reality that is superior to the Old. The author is NOT making a one-to-one comparison with the Old Covenant to where the "eating" in the New is the same physical eating as in the Old, but rather a new, spiritual form of it.

Therefore, there is no need whatsoever for the communion bread and wine to contain the presence of Jesus in some "real" way in order for the communion "sacrifice" to be an actual, efficacious sacrifice. The efficacious sacrifice has already been completed. Jesus does not have to be "present" within the bread and wine of communion - he was present at the cross and that is all that was needed. The "Real Presence" of Jesus" in a repeated ceremonial sacrifice is a pure redundancy. And what's infinitely worse, it's actually a rejection of the finished work of Jesus on the cross. And this is what Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy formalize as dogma, a requirement for salvation. Absolutely incredible, and disgusting.

The fact that the author of Hebrews only tells us that the "eucharist" is a "sacrifice of praise"... never once mentioning anything about the sacrifice involving a kind of "real" presence within the communion bread and wine... is illustrative of all of this, and it completely invalidates your view. You're really reading HEAVILY your Orthodox theology into this passage, and your reasoning above is completely forced.

And it needs to be restated, that nowhere, not in Hebrews or anywhere else in Scripture are we told that if a believer takes communion as a symbol/memorial rather than as a "Real Presence", that there is any kind of loss for that believer, let alone salvation itself. A fact made evident by your complete failure to tell us what it is exactly that the believer misses out on. The Roman Catholics fail to do the same. Which reminds me to ask you again: if you really believe that Hebrews 13 and John 6 are telling you that "eating the sacrifice" is to be done in the same manner as in the Old Covenant.... then why aren't you holding to the Roman Catholic view?

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

---

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.

---

Apparently, you do not understand Hebrews 13 at all.

NOTHING in Hebrews 13 says that the communion bread and wine are the "Real Presence" of Jesus, or that communion/the Eucharist is the replacement "ceremony" for the church that is the necessary means for us to receive some kind of grace. Where it says "those who serve the tent (Old Covenant Jews who still perform animal sacrifices) have no right to eat", the "eating" there is not literal. He's making the point that the New Covenant involves a higher form of "eating" that the Old Covenant Jews rejected. The "eating" isn't physical. This is made obvious by reading the verse immediately prior:

"... for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them."

The author clearly is setting up the meaning of "eating" in the following verse in the mind of the reader to convey something higher and more significant than the physical ingestion of food.

Verse 15, which you reference, perfectly illustrates how the author is elevating the concepts of "eating" and "sacrifice" to go BEYOND, not be identical to, their meaning in the Old Covenant way:

"Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God."

It's really odd how you can read a verse thinking it makes your argument, when it completely destroys it. Clearly, this verse is saying that the "Eucharist" is NOT a sacrifice that involves the real, actual re-presentation of Jesus' sacrifice that is performed on an physical altar by human priests - but rather a "sacrifice" that comes from the heart of the believer in the form of thanksgiving, praise, obedience, and love for others. The very verse you offered as support for your view completely destroys it and fully supports the Protestant view instead.

---

Here is the outline: don't slide back into ceremonial food law (v.9), we have a real altar you don't have access to (v.10), pointing to Christ's sacrifice outside the camp (v.11-13), and because of that we also offer praise and good works (v.15-16). That's addition, not swap. You've got cause and effect flipped, treating our response to the altar as if it erases the altar.

You've got the logic backwards. Verse 9's "foods" isn't saying eating in general is now some metaphor, it's talking about Jewish food laws, same thing Hebrews 9:10 already covers, "foods and drinks and various washings." It's saying don't get sucked back into Mosaic dietary rules, not "eating doesn't mean eating anymore."

Then verse 10 switches to a totally different image: an altar. "We have an altar those who serve the tent have no right to eat from." That keeps going with real priestly language, actual animals, actual blood, an actual high priest, burned outside the camp. The whole passage is set up as a parallel, their altar and eating vs. our altar and eating. If you want "eat" to suddenly mean something non-physical only on our side, you have to show me that in the text. You're just asserting it and it doesn't make any sense.

And verse 15 doesn't redefine verse 10, it adds to it. Nothing says "sacrifice of praise" replaces the altar. It's an extra exhortation, right next to verse 16's " do good and share." Those are the fruits that come from having the altar, not a reinterpretation that cancels it out. You're treating two separate things, the altar-eating in v.10 and the praise sacrifice in v.15, like the second one swallows the first. Hebrews never says that.

---

You're looking at this passage with confirmation bias through your Orthodox lens, so you're reading it as a prescription for the New Covenant church to have the same system of temples, priests, altars, sacrifices, and the physical eating of the sacrifice that was characteristic of the Old Covenant. But this is completely missing the point the author is making, and is in fact going backwards from what the author intended. That old system is obsolete. There is NO MORE SACRIFICE. Jesus' sacrifice on the cross was the finished, once-for-all-time sacrifice for all sins, past, present and future. It completely eliminates the need for any further sacrifice."It is finished". Similarly, there is no more temple, because God now resides in the hearts of believers. There is no more organizational priesthood, because Jesus is now our one, true Priest who intercedes for us directly with God, and we are the "priesthood of believers". There is no more sacrificial "altar" to atone for our sins, because the final sacrifice has already been made. And there is no more literal, physical eating of the sacrifice - the "eating" is what we do when we, by believing in Jesus, gain spiritual sustenance leading to eternal life, which is superior to physical eating, which only gives us physical sustenance towards physical, temporal life. The point of Hebrews was to show that the New Covenant is made superior to the Old - the Old was only a type, a shadow of what was to come. The "altar" and "eating" language the author uses in this chapter in reference to the New Covenant is describing a new, higher, spiritual reality that is superior to the Old. The author is NOT making a one-to-one comparison with the Old Covenant to where the "eating" in the New is the same physical eating as in the Old, but rather a new, spiritual form of it.

Therefore, there is no need whatsoever for the communion bread and wine to contain the presence of Jesus in some "real" way in order for the communion "sacrifice" to be an actual, efficacious sacrifice. The efficacious sacrifice has already been completed. Jesus does not have to be "present" within the bread and wine of communion - he was present at the cross and that is all that was needed. The "Real Presence" of Jesus" in a repeated ceremonial sacrifice is a pure redundancy. And what's infinitely worse, it's actually a rejection of the finished work of Jesus on the cross. And this is what Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy formalize as dogma, a requirement for salvation. Absolutely incredible, and disgusting.

The fact that the author of Hebrews only tells us that the "eucharist" is a "sacrifice of praise"... never once mentioning anything about the sacrifice involving a kind of "real" presence within the communion bread and wine... is illustrative of all of this, and it completely invalidates your view. You're really reading HEAVILY your Orthodox theology into this passage, and your reasoning above is completely forced.

And it needs to be restated, that nowhere, not in Hebrews or anywhere else in Scripture are we told that if a believer takes communion as a symbol/memorial rather than as a "Real Presence", that there is any kind of loss for that believer, let alone salvation itself. A fact made evident by your complete failure to tell us what it is exactly that the believer misses out on. The Roman Catholics fail to do the same. Which reminds me to ask you again: if you really believe that Hebrews 13 and John 6 are telling you that "eating the sacrifice" is to be done in the same manner as in the Old Covenant.... then why aren't you holding to the Roman Catholic view?

---

This might be borderline plausible if you just picked up a Bible and started reading it with absolutely no context. That's the problem, though. You can't interpret the Scripture without an understanding of historical Christian belief and practice (or "bias," as you call it).

Jude 1:9

Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

---

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.

---

Apparently, you do not understand Hebrews 13 at all.

NOTHING in Hebrews 13 says that the communion bread and wine are the "Real Presence" of Jesus, or that communion/the Eucharist is the replacement "ceremony" for the church that is the necessary means for us to receive some kind of grace. Where it says "those who serve the tent (Old Covenant Jews who still perform animal sacrifices) have no right to eat", the "eating" there is not literal. He's making the point that the New Covenant involves a higher form of "eating" that the Old Covenant Jews rejected. The "eating" isn't physical. This is made obvious by reading the verse immediately prior:

"... for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them."

The author clearly is setting up the meaning of "eating" in the following verse in the mind of the reader to convey something higher and more significant than the physical ingestion of food.

Verse 15, which you reference, perfectly illustrates how the author is elevating the concepts of "eating" and "sacrifice" to go BEYOND, not be identical to, their meaning in the Old Covenant way:

"Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God."

It's really odd how you can read a verse thinking it makes your argument, when it completely destroys it. Clearly, this verse is saying that the "Eucharist" is NOT a sacrifice that involves the real, actual re-presentation of Jesus' sacrifice that is performed on an physical altar by human priests - but rather a "sacrifice" that comes from the heart of the believer in the form of thanksgiving, praise, obedience, and love for others. The very verse you offered as support for your view completely destroys it and fully supports the Protestant view instead.

---

Here is the outline: don't slide back into ceremonial food law (v.9), we have a real altar you don't have access to (v.10), pointing to Christ's sacrifice outside the camp (v.11-13), and because of that we also offer praise and good works (v.15-16). That's addition, not swap. You've got cause and effect flipped, treating our response to the altar as if it erases the altar.

You've got the logic backwards. Verse 9's "foods" isn't saying eating in general is now some metaphor, it's talking about Jewish food laws, same thing Hebrews 9:10 already covers, "foods and drinks and various washings." It's saying don't get sucked back into Mosaic dietary rules, not "eating doesn't mean eating anymore."

Then verse 10 switches to a totally different image: an altar. "We have an altar those who serve the tent have no right to eat from." That keeps going with real priestly language, actual animals, actual blood, an actual high priest, burned outside the camp. The whole passage is set up as a parallel, their altar and eating vs. our altar and eating. If you want "eat" to suddenly mean something non-physical only on our side, you have to show me that in the text. You're just asserting it and it doesn't make any sense.

And verse 15 doesn't redefine verse 10, it adds to it. Nothing says "sacrifice of praise" replaces the altar. It's an extra exhortation, right next to verse 16's " do good and share." Those are the fruits that come from having the altar, not a reinterpretation that cancels it out. You're treating two separate things, the altar-eating in v.10 and the praise sacrifice in v.15, like the second one swallows the first. Hebrews never says that.

---

You're looking at this passage with confirmation bias through your Orthodox lens, so you're reading it as a prescription for the New Covenant church to have the same system of temples, priests, altars, sacrifices, and the physical eating of the sacrifice that was characteristic of the Old Covenant. But this is completely missing the point the author is making, and is in fact going backwards from what the author intended. That old system is obsolete. There is NO MORE SACRIFICE. Jesus' sacrifice on the cross was the finished, once-for-all-time sacrifice for all sins, past, present and future. It completely eliminates the need for any further sacrifice."It is finished". Similarly, there is no more temple, because God now resides in the hearts of believers. There is no more organizational priesthood, because Jesus is now our one, true Priest who intercedes for us directly with God, and we are the "priesthood of believers". There is no more sacrificial "altar" to atone for our sins, because the final sacrifice has already been made. And there is no more literal, physical eating of the sacrifice - the "eating" is what we do when we, by believing in Jesus, gain spiritual sustenance leading to eternal life, which is superior to physical eating, which only gives us physical sustenance towards physical, temporal life. The point of Hebrews was to show that the New Covenant is made superior to the Old - the Old was only a type, a shadow of what was to come. The "altar" and "eating" language the author uses in this chapter in reference to the New Covenant is describing a new, higher, spiritual reality that is superior to the Old. The author is NOT making a one-to-one comparison with the Old Covenant to where the "eating" in the New is the same physical eating as in the Old, but rather a new, spiritual form of it.

Therefore, there is no need whatsoever for the communion bread and wine to contain the presence of Jesus in some "real" way in order for the communion "sacrifice" to be an actual, efficacious sacrifice. The efficacious sacrifice has already been completed. Jesus does not have to be "present" within the bread and wine of communion - he was present at the cross and that is all that was needed. The "Real Presence" of Jesus" in a repeated ceremonial sacrifice is a pure redundancy. And what's infinitely worse, it's actually a rejection of the finished work of Jesus on the cross. And this is what Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy formalize as dogma, a requirement for salvation. Absolutely incredible, and disgusting.

The fact that the author of Hebrews only tells us that the "eucharist" is a "sacrifice of praise"... never once mentioning anything about the sacrifice involving a kind of "real" presence within the communion bread and wine... is illustrative of all of this, and it completely invalidates your view. You're really reading HEAVILY your Orthodox theology into this passage, and your reasoning above is completely forced.

And it needs to be restated, that nowhere, not in Hebrews or anywhere else in Scripture are we told that if a believer takes communion as a symbol/memorial rather than as a "Real Presence", that there is any kind of loss for that believer, let alone salvation itself. A fact made evident by your complete failure to tell us what it is exactly that the believer misses out on. The Roman Catholics fail to do the same. Which reminds me to ask you again: if you really believe that Hebrews 13 and John 6 are telling you that "eating the sacrifice" is to be done in the same manner as in the Old Covenant.... then why aren't you holding to the Roman Catholic view?

---

This might be borderline plausible if you just picked up a Bible and started reading it with absolutely no context. That's the problem, though. You can't interpret the Scripture without an understanding of historical Christian belief and practice (or "bias," as you call it).

---

you cant interpret the bible without understanding historic Jewish culture and belief as well early christian culture and belief

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

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.

---

Apparently, you do not understand Hebrews 13 at all.

NOTHING in Hebrews 13 says that the communion bread and wine are the "Real Presence" of Jesus, or that communion/the Eucharist is the replacement "ceremony" for the church that is the necessary means for us to receive some kind of grace. Where it says "those who serve the tent (Old Covenant Jews who still perform animal sacrifices) have no right to eat", the "eating" there is not literal. He's making the point that the New Covenant involves a higher form of "eating" that the Old Covenant Jews rejected. The "eating" isn't physical. This is made obvious by reading the verse immediately prior:

"... for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them."

The author clearly is setting up the meaning of "eating" in the following verse in the mind of the reader to convey something higher and more significant than the physical ingestion of food.

Verse 15, which you reference, perfectly illustrates how the author is elevating the concepts of "eating" and "sacrifice" to go BEYOND, not be identical to, their meaning in the Old Covenant way:

"Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God."

It's really odd how you can read a verse thinking it makes your argument, when it completely destroys it. Clearly, this verse is saying that the "Eucharist" is NOT a sacrifice that involves the real, actual re-presentation of Jesus' sacrifice that is performed on an physical altar by human priests - but rather a "sacrifice" that comes from the heart of the believer in the form of thanksgiving, praise, obedience, and love for others. The very verse you offered as support for your view completely destroys it and fully supports the Protestant view instead.

---

Here is the outline: don't slide back into ceremonial food law (v.9), we have a real altar you don't have access to (v.10), pointing to Christ's sacrifice outside the camp (v.11-13), and because of that we also offer praise and good works (v.15-16). That's addition, not swap. You've got cause and effect flipped, treating our response to the altar as if it erases the altar.

You've got the logic backwards. Verse 9's "foods" isn't saying eating in general is now some metaphor, it's talking about Jewish food laws, same thing Hebrews 9:10 already covers, "foods and drinks and various washings." It's saying don't get sucked back into Mosaic dietary rules, not "eating doesn't mean eating anymore."

Then verse 10 switches to a totally different image: an altar. "We have an altar those who serve the tent have no right to eat from." That keeps going with real priestly language, actual animals, actual blood, an actual high priest, burned outside the camp. The whole passage is set up as a parallel, their altar and eating vs. our altar and eating. If you want "eat" to suddenly mean something non-physical only on our side, you have to show me that in the text. You're just asserting it and it doesn't make any sense.

And verse 15 doesn't redefine verse 10, it adds to it. Nothing says "sacrifice of praise" replaces the altar. It's an extra exhortation, right next to verse 16's " do good and share." Those are the fruits that come from having the altar, not a reinterpretation that cancels it out. You're treating two separate things, the altar-eating in v.10 and the praise sacrifice in v.15, like the second one swallows the first. Hebrews never says that.

---

You're looking at this passage with confirmation bias through your Orthodox lens, so you're reading it as a prescription for the New Covenant church to have the same system of temples, priests, altars, sacrifices, and the physical eating of the sacrifice that was characteristic of the Old Covenant. But this is completely missing the point the author is making, and is in fact going backwards from what the author intended. That old system is obsolete. There is NO MORE SACRIFICE. Jesus' sacrifice on the cross was the finished, once-for-all-time sacrifice for all sins, past, present and future. It completely eliminates the need for any further sacrifice."It is finished". Similarly, there is no more temple, because God now resides in the hearts of believers. There is no more organizational priesthood, because Jesus is now our one, true Priest who intercedes for us directly with God, and we are the "priesthood of believers". There is no more sacrificial "altar" to atone for our sins, because the final sacrifice has already been made. And there is no more literal, physical eating of the sacrifice - the "eating" is what we do when we, by believing in Jesus, gain spiritual sustenance leading to eternal life, which is superior to physical eating, which only gives us physical sustenance towards physical, temporal life. The point of Hebrews was to show that the New Covenant is made superior to the Old - the Old was only a type, a shadow of what was to come. The "altar" and "eating" language the author uses in this chapter in reference to the New Covenant is describing a new, higher, spiritual reality that is superior to the Old. The author is NOT making a one-to-one comparison with the Old Covenant to where the "eating" in the New is the same physical eating as in the Old, but rather a new, spiritual form of it.

Therefore, there is no need whatsoever for the communion bread and wine to contain the presence of Jesus in some "real" way in order for the communion "sacrifice" to be an actual, efficacious sacrifice. The efficacious sacrifice has already been completed. Jesus does not have to be "present" within the bread and wine of communion - he was present at the cross and that is all that was needed. The "Real Presence" of Jesus" in a repeated ceremonial sacrifice is a pure redundancy. And what's infinitely worse, it's actually a rejection of the finished work of Jesus on the cross. And this is what Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy formalize as dogma, a requirement for salvation. Absolutely incredible, and disgusting.

The fact that the author of Hebrews only tells us that the "eucharist" is a "sacrifice of praise"... never once mentioning anything about the sacrifice involving a kind of "real" presence within the communion bread and wine... is illustrative of all of this, and it completely invalidates your view. You're really reading HEAVILY your Orthodox theology into this passage, and your reasoning above is completely forced.

And it needs to be restated, that nowhere, not in Hebrews or anywhere else in Scripture are we told that if a believer takes communion as a symbol/memorial rather than as a "Real Presence", that there is any kind of loss for that believer, let alone salvation itself. A fact made evident by your complete failure to tell us what it is exactly that the believer misses out on. The Roman Catholics fail to do the same. Which reminds me to ask you again: if you really believe that Hebrews 13 and John 6 are telling you that "eating the sacrifice" is to be done in the same manner as in the Old Covenant.... then why aren't you holding to the Roman Catholic view?

---

Neither Orthodoxy nor Catholicism teaches Christ is sacrificed again at each liturgy. Hebrews itself says "once for all" (9:26-28), and Orthodox theology fully affirms that. What's claimed is that the one, finished sacrifice is made truly present and truly participated in at each Eucharist, not repeated, not added to, or improved on. You don't know our theology man. Seriously, this is basic stuff we don't believe…

On "no more altar, temple, priesthood," you're asserting all of that, but Hebrews itself doesn't erase this language, it keeps using it in the present tense about the church. "We have an altar" (13:10) is present tense, not "we used to have." If everything physical/institutional was dissolved into pure inward spirituality, why does the author keep reaching for priest, altar, sacrifice, blood language to describe what Christians presently have, rather than simply saying "you don't need any of that anymore"? You're reading your conclusion into the tense of the verbs.

You haven't shown me where the text itself says "eating" here means something non-physical. You've given me a theological system (finished sacrifice, priesthood of all believers, indwelling Spirit) and then used that system to tell me what "eat" must mean here. You're reading a system into a text.

Rome dogmatizes a specific philosophical mechanism, transubstantiation. They try to explain it scientifically and break it apart (that's nominalism btw). Orthodoxy affirms the reality of the change without dogmatizing the metaphysical mechanism, it's held as a mystery, not explained.

I did answer what's missed, repeatedly, real union with Christ's life, tied to actual resurrection (John 6:54), the actual participation Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 10:16. You calling that answer invisible doesn't make it invisible.

Just so you know, literally every church father who wrote on this, going back to men who personally knew the apostles, read the Eucharist exactly the way I'm reading it. Real presence, not symbolic.

Ignatius of Antioch, a direct disciple of the apostles, condemned people who "do not confess the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ." Justin Martyr called it literally "the flesh and blood of Jesus." Irenaeus, a disciple of Polycarp, who was a disciple of John, used the real presence to argue against Gnostics. Cyril of Jerusalem, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Augustine, different regions, different languages, different centuries, all agree. There is no patristic memorialist tradition. The first crack toward symbolism doesn't show up until Ratramnus in the 9th century, 800 years later. So either the entire early church, including men who personally knew the apostles, unanimously misread these texts from the very start with zero dissent, or you're the one reading your system into them.

A lot of this traces back to how you were likely taught to read the Old Testament to begin with. You've probably been trained to treat the Old Covenant as basically obsolete, and anything from Second Temple Jewish practice as just legalistic Phariseeism to be discarded rather than fulfilled. But Jesus and the apostles were Jews operating inside a worldview with a priesthood, altar, sacrifice, and temple, categories they fulfill and transform, not erase. Fulfill doesn't men's disappears.
You assume the real problem is always the heart, some internal, personal, mental thing, and you apply that to everything, sacraments, worship, the temple, the altar, even the whole Old Covenant. So everything physical is meaningless and now down to "it's really just about what's inside you." That's why "eating" has to turn into a symbol. That's why "altar" has to turn into a metaphor. The text isn't forcing that reading, your assumption that everything comes down to internal sincerity is.

Scripture doesn't pit the heart against physical worship like they're competing. God cares about the heart, sure, but he also gave physical means to actually form, feed, and heal that heart.

Great discussion

Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

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.

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Apparently, you do not understand Hebrews 13 at all.

NOTHING in Hebrews 13 says that the communion bread and wine are the "Real Presence" of Jesus, or that communion/the Eucharist is the replacement "ceremony" for the church that is the necessary means for us to receive some kind of grace. Where it says "those who serve the tent (Old Covenant Jews who still perform animal sacrifices) have no right to eat", the "eating" there is not literal. He's making the point that the New Covenant involves a higher form of "eating" that the Old Covenant Jews rejected. The "eating" isn't physical. This is made obvious by reading the verse immediately prior:

"... for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them."

The author clearly is setting up the meaning of "eating" in the following verse in the mind of the reader to convey something higher and more significant than the physical ingestion of food.

Verse 15, which you reference, perfectly illustrates how the author is elevating the concepts of "eating" and "sacrifice" to go BEYOND, not be identical to, their meaning in the Old Covenant way:

"Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God."

It's really odd how you can read a verse thinking it makes your argument, when it completely destroys it. Clearly, this verse is saying that the "Eucharist" is NOT a sacrifice that involves the real, actual re-presentation of Jesus' sacrifice that is performed on an physical altar by human priests - but rather a "sacrifice" that comes from the heart of the believer in the form of thanksgiving, praise, obedience, and love for others. The very verse you offered as support for your view completely destroys it and fully supports the Protestant view instead.

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Here is the outline: don't slide back into ceremonial food law (v.9), we have a real altar you don't have access to (v.10), pointing to Christ's sacrifice outside the camp (v.11-13), and because of that we also offer praise and good works (v.15-16). That's addition, not swap. You've got cause and effect flipped, treating our response to the altar as if it erases the altar.

You've got the logic backwards. Verse 9's "foods" isn't saying eating in general is now some metaphor, it's talking about Jewish food laws, same thing Hebrews 9:10 already covers, "foods and drinks and various washings." It's saying don't get sucked back into Mosaic dietary rules, not "eating doesn't mean eating anymore."

Then verse 10 switches to a totally different image: an altar. "We have an altar those who serve the tent have no right to eat from." That keeps going with real priestly language, actual animals, actual blood, an actual high priest, burned outside the camp. The whole passage is set up as a parallel, their altar and eating vs. our altar and eating. If you want "eat" to suddenly mean something non-physical only on our side, you have to show me that in the text. You're just asserting it and it doesn't make any sense.

And verse 15 doesn't redefine verse 10, it adds to it. Nothing says "sacrifice of praise" replaces the altar. It's an extra exhortation, right next to verse 16's " do good and share." Those are the fruits that come from having the altar, not a reinterpretation that cancels it out. You're treating two separate things, the altar-eating in v.10 and the praise sacrifice in v.15, like the second one swallows the first. Hebrews never says that.

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You're looking at this passage with confirmation bias through your Orthodox lens, so you're reading it as a prescription for the New Covenant church to have the same system of temples, priests, altars, sacrifices, and the physical eating of the sacrifice that was characteristic of the Old Covenant. But this is completely missing the point the author is making, and is in fact going backwards from what the author intended. That old system is obsolete. There is NO MORE SACRIFICE. Jesus' sacrifice on the cross was the finished, once-for-all-time sacrifice for all sins, past, present and future. It completely eliminates the need for any further sacrifice."It is finished". Similarly, there is no more temple, because God now resides in the hearts of believers. There is no more organizational priesthood, because Jesus is now our one, true Priest who intercedes for us directly with God, and we are the "priesthood of believers". There is no more sacrificial "altar" to atone for our sins, because the final sacrifice has already been made. And there is no more literal, physical eating of the sacrifice - the "eating" is what we do when we, by believing in Jesus, gain spiritual sustenance leading to eternal life, which is superior to physical eating, which only gives us physical sustenance towards physical, temporal life. The point of Hebrews was to show that the New Covenant is made superior to the Old - the Old was only a type, a shadow of what was to come. The "altar" and "eating" language the author uses in this chapter in reference to the New Covenant is describing a new, higher, spiritual reality that is superior to the Old. The author is NOT making a one-to-one comparison with the Old Covenant to where the "eating" in the New is the same physical eating as in the Old, but rather a new, spiritual form of it.

Therefore, there is no need whatsoever for the communion bread and wine to contain the presence of Jesus in some "real" way in order for the communion "sacrifice" to be an actual, efficacious sacrifice. The efficacious sacrifice has already been completed. Jesus does not have to be "present" within the bread and wine of communion - he was present at the cross and that is all that was needed. The "Real Presence" of Jesus" in a repeated ceremonial sacrifice is a pure redundancy. And what's infinitely worse, it's actually a rejection of the finished work of Jesus on the cross. And this is what Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy formalize as dogma, a requirement for salvation. Absolutely incredible, and disgusting.

The fact that the author of Hebrews only tells us that the "eucharist" is a "sacrifice of praise"... never once mentioning anything about the sacrifice involving a kind of "real" presence within the communion bread and wine... is illustrative of all of this, and it completely invalidates your view. You're really reading HEAVILY your Orthodox theology into this passage, and your reasoning above is completely forced.

And it needs to be restated, that nowhere, not in Hebrews or anywhere else in Scripture are we told that if a believer takes communion as a symbol/memorial rather than as a "Real Presence", that there is any kind of loss for that believer, let alone salvation itself. A fact made evident by your complete failure to tell us what it is exactly that the believer misses out on. The Roman Catholics fail to do the same. Which reminds me to ask you again: if you really believe that Hebrews 13 and John 6 are telling you that "eating the sacrifice" is to be done in the same manner as in the Old Covenant.... then why aren't you holding to the Roman Catholic view?

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This might be borderline plausible if you just picked up a Bible and started reading it with absolutely no context. That's the problem, though. You can't interpret the Scripture without an understanding of historical Christian belief and practice (or "bias," as you call it).

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Translation: "You can't come to our (Roman Catholic) conclusion unless you hold our hand-picked church fathers as equal in authority to the Scriptures."

Historical Christianity needs to be viewed in context of Scripture, NOT the other way around. Historical Christianity involves fallible men trying to interpret and follow the infallible Word of God. And which history should we use as context to interpret Scripture? Church history was varied in opinion on many things, the nature of the Eucharist being a prime example. I can claim continuity with the early church for everything I've said, just as much as you say you can.

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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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.

---

Apparently, you do not understand Hebrews 13 at all.

NOTHING in Hebrews 13 says that the communion bread and wine are the "Real Presence" of Jesus, or that communion/the Eucharist is the replacement "ceremony" for the church that is the necessary means for us to receive some kind of grace. Where it says "those who serve the tent (Old Covenant Jews who still perform animal sacrifices) have no right to eat", the "eating" there is not literal. He's making the point that the New Covenant involves a higher form of "eating" that the Old Covenant Jews rejected. The "eating" isn't physical. This is made obvious by reading the verse immediately prior:

"... for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them."

The author clearly is setting up the meaning of "eating" in the following verse in the mind of the reader to convey something higher and more significant than the physical ingestion of food.

Verse 15, which you reference, perfectly illustrates how the author is elevating the concepts of "eating" and "sacrifice" to go BEYOND, not be identical to, their meaning in the Old Covenant way:

"Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God."

It's really odd how you can read a verse thinking it makes your argument, when it completely destroys it. Clearly, this verse is saying that the "Eucharist" is NOT a sacrifice that involves the real, actual re-presentation of Jesus' sacrifice that is performed on an physical altar by human priests - but rather a "sacrifice" that comes from the heart of the believer in the form of thanksgiving, praise, obedience, and love for others. The very verse you offered as support for your view completely destroys it and fully supports the Protestant view instead.

---

Here is the outline: don't slide back into ceremonial food law (v.9), we have a real altar you don't have access to (v.10), pointing to Christ's sacrifice outside the camp (v.11-13), and because of that we also offer praise and good works (v.15-16). That's addition, not swap. You've got cause and effect flipped, treating our response to the altar as if it erases the altar.

You've got the logic backwards. Verse 9's "foods" isn't saying eating in general is now some metaphor, it's talking about Jewish food laws, same thing Hebrews 9:10 already covers, "foods and drinks and various washings." It's saying don't get sucked back into Mosaic dietary rules, not "eating doesn't mean eating anymore."

Then verse 10 switches to a totally different image: an altar. "We have an altar those who serve the tent have no right to eat from." That keeps going with real priestly language, actual animals, actual blood, an actual high priest, burned outside the camp. The whole passage is set up as a parallel, their altar and eating vs. our altar and eating. If you want "eat" to suddenly mean something non-physical only on our side, you have to show me that in the text. You're just asserting it and it doesn't make any sense.

And verse 15 doesn't redefine verse 10, it adds to it. Nothing says "sacrifice of praise" replaces the altar. It's an extra exhortation, right next to verse 16's " do good and share." Those are the fruits that come from having the altar, not a reinterpretation that cancels it out. You're treating two separate things, the altar-eating in v.10 and the praise sacrifice in v.15, like the second one swallows the first. Hebrews never says that.

---

You're looking at this passage with confirmation bias through your Orthodox lens, so you're reading it as a prescription for the New Covenant church to have the same system of temples, priests, altars, sacrifices, and the physical eating of the sacrifice that was characteristic of the Old Covenant. But this is completely missing the point the author is making, and is in fact going backwards from what the author intended. That old system is obsolete. There is NO MORE SACRIFICE. Jesus' sacrifice on the cross was the finished, once-for-all-time sacrifice for all sins, past, present and future. It completely eliminates the need for any further sacrifice."It is finished". Similarly, there is no more temple, because God now resides in the hearts of believers. There is no more organizational priesthood, because Jesus is now our one, true Priest who intercedes for us directly with God, and we are the "priesthood of believers". There is no more sacrificial "altar" to atone for our sins, because the final sacrifice has already been made. And there is no more literal, physical eating of the sacrifice - the "eating" is what we do when we, by believing in Jesus, gain spiritual sustenance leading to eternal life, which is superior to physical eating, which only gives us physical sustenance towards physical, temporal life. The point of Hebrews was to show that the New Covenant is made superior to the Old - the Old was only a type, a shadow of what was to come. The "altar" and "eating" language the author uses in this chapter in reference to the New Covenant is describing a new, higher, spiritual reality that is superior to the Old. The author is NOT making a one-to-one comparison with the Old Covenant to where the "eating" in the New is the same physical eating as in the Old, but rather a new, spiritual form of it.

Therefore, there is no need whatsoever for the communion bread and wine to contain the presence of Jesus in some "real" way in order for the communion "sacrifice" to be an actual, efficacious sacrifice. The efficacious sacrifice has already been completed. Jesus does not have to be "present" within the bread and wine of communion - he was present at the cross and that is all that was needed. The "Real Presence" of Jesus" in a repeated ceremonial sacrifice is a pure redundancy. And what's infinitely worse, it's actually a rejection of the finished work of Jesus on the cross. And this is what Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy formalize as dogma, a requirement for salvation. Absolutely incredible, and disgusting.

The fact that the author of Hebrews only tells us that the "eucharist" is a "sacrifice of praise"... never once mentioning anything about the sacrifice involving a kind of "real" presence within the communion bread and wine... is illustrative of all of this, and it completely invalidates your view. You're really reading HEAVILY your Orthodox theology into this passage, and your reasoning above is completely forced.

And it needs to be restated, that nowhere, not in Hebrews or anywhere else in Scripture are we told that if a believer takes communion as a symbol/memorial rather than as a "Real Presence", that there is any kind of loss for that believer, let alone salvation itself. A fact made evident by your complete failure to tell us what it is exactly that the believer misses out on. The Roman Catholics fail to do the same. Which reminds me to ask you again: if you really believe that Hebrews 13 and John 6 are telling you that "eating the sacrifice" is to be done in the same manner as in the Old Covenant.... then why aren't you holding to the Roman Catholic view?

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Neither Orthodoxy nor Catholicism teaches Christ is sacrificed again at each liturgy. Hebrews itself says "once for all" (9:26-28), and Orthodox theology fully affirms that. What's claimed is that the one, finished sacrifice is made truly present and truly participated in at each Eucharist, not repeated, not added to, or improved on. You don't know our theology man. Seriously, this is basic stuff we don't believe…

On "no more altar, temple, priesthood," you're asserting all of that, but Hebrews itself doesn't erase this language, it keeps using it in the present tense about the church. "We have an altar" (13:10) is present tense, not "we used to have." If everything physical/institutional was dissolved into pure inward spirituality, why does the author keep reaching for priest, altar, sacrifice, blood language to describe what Christians presently have, rather than simply saying "you don't need any of that anymore"? You're reading your conclusion into the tense of the verbs.

You haven't shown me where the text itself says "eating" here means something non-physical. You've given me a theological system (finished sacrifice, priesthood of all believers, indwelling Spirit) and then used that system to tell me what "eat" must mean here. You're reading a system into a text.

Rome dogmatizes a specific philosophical mechanism, transubstantiation. They try to explain it scientifically and break it apart (that's nominalism btw). Orthodoxy affirms the reality of the change without dogmatizing the metaphysical mechanism, it's held as a mystery, not explained.

I did answer what's missed, repeatedly, real union with Christ's life, tied to actual resurrection (John 6:54), the actual participation Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 10:16. You calling that answer invisible doesn't make it invisible.

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Nowhere did I say that RC/Orthodoxy "sacrifices again" in the Eucharist. What I said about their view, is clearly the official view of those churches: that the Eucharist is an actual, propitiatory sacrifice. Yes, I do know your theology. You should know by know that I'm not gonna claim things that I can't back up.

As I've clearly said, Hebrews isn't "erasing" the language of "altar", "priest", "temple", etc. it's elevating them to a new, superior form that is the ultimate realization of the Old Covenant types. Your problem is that you're still reading them through Old Covenant lenses.

On "eating" being figurative, rather than literal: you're missing the context that the author of Hebrews himself set up in the previous verse, where he says we are to be strengthened by grace, NOT by foods - in other words, by a spiritual, non-physical form of sustenance, i.e. "eating". The author is carrying over this same idea into his very next verse, where he says those Old Covenant Jews who reject Jesus have "no right" to "eat" this way because they rejected him. Even apart from this, the idea of a spiritual form of "eating" goes right along with the entire message of the book, which is that the Old Covenant types of of temples, priests, sacrifice, and "eating" have all now been realized in their new, superior, and spiritual form where their nature and significance have been perfected. It's hardly conceivable that this author of Hebrews would really be saying that physically putting something into our stomachs is this new and superior way we are reconciled with God.

And one only needs to look at Scripture to confirm all of this - the repeated declarations that salvation is by faith, that believing in Jesus from the heart is how one is justified, and in the direct examples where people were saved or told how to be saved, without physically eating a single thing, or told that they had to.

"I did answer what's missed, repeatedly" - and your answer is completely invalidated by Scripture. You can't even hold your answer consistent with your own theology. It falls apart every time the thief, sinful woman of Luke 7, and the house of Cornelius, none of whom ate anything, are brought up. It completely falls apart with Jesus words in John 6:40. Seriously - if you honestly believe that physically eating something is the way we receive the grace of salvation, then you simply do not understand the Gospel. It's a thinking like Nicodemus, when he tried to understand being "born again" in physical terms. It's a worrisome sign that you may have not truly been regenerated by the Spirit.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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BUDOS said:

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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.

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"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."

*** Point to exactly where I did what you say.

I'm pretty certain that your perceptions are highly biased and flawed. Let me point out that STILL, you are trying to shift the attention to a person's character and motivations, rather than the substance of what is being said. And when called out on it, all you did was double down as you did here. This is literally ALL YOU HAVE DONE here. This is ALL you have ever contributed.

Like Doc said, there are people here who have this "no one is really wrong" approach, which is so far from being true. And you are definitely one of them. Since we're freely dispensing personal evaluations here as you're always doing: you want warm, fuzzy discussions where everyone goes home happy with their beliefs. You cower from the hard truth. That's the real danger, NOT anything I'm doing. You constantly intepret the telling of hard truth as being "disrespectful". You constantly try to shame and scold those who are trying to tell the hard truth to people who need to hear it, like you're some kind of school teacher wagging your finger at children. You want "clarity"? Like I already said, you have been an enemy to truth and to clarity here. There is something really, really wrong with people who call themselves "Christian" and do what you do. Do want me to prove everything I'm saying here? Shall I ask your opinions about the tough truths about Mary and Roman Catholicism again, which you cowered from?

By the way, your "thanking" those who post comments in the manner you approve of, in an obvious attempt to manipulate the discussion, is just so passive-aggressive and so, so pathetic and nauseating. Seriously, can you STOP with the patronizing and personality evaluations, and engage the actual merits of the discussion, if you're even able? If you really want me to "consider" your posts, then this is the route - it's definitely NOT through scolding by someone whose opinion I have no reason to respect.

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BTD,
It is getting pretty obvious that you really are continuing your efforts to avoid the question. Is it that you either really don't know the answer to the question, or you don't want to answer it due to what it reveal about you?

Either way, I'm getting really tired of your religious narcissist behavior (according to its definition, not mine), so let's just move on, and perhaps we will take this issue up at a later time. One of the positives is that there are times you do make meaningful contributions to multiple discussions.

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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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.

---

Apparently, you do not understand Hebrews 13 at all.

NOTHING in Hebrews 13 says that the communion bread and wine are the "Real Presence" of Jesus, or that communion/the Eucharist is the replacement "ceremony" for the church that is the necessary means for us to receive some kind of grace. Where it says "those who serve the tent (Old Covenant Jews who still perform animal sacrifices) have no right to eat", the "eating" there is not literal. He's making the point that the New Covenant involves a higher form of "eating" that the Old Covenant Jews rejected. The "eating" isn't physical. This is made obvious by reading the verse immediately prior:

"... for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them."

The author clearly is setting up the meaning of "eating" in the following verse in the mind of the reader to convey something higher and more significant than the physical ingestion of food.

Verse 15, which you reference, perfectly illustrates how the author is elevating the concepts of "eating" and "sacrifice" to go BEYOND, not be identical to, their meaning in the Old Covenant way:

"Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God."

It's really odd how you can read a verse thinking it makes your argument, when it completely destroys it. Clearly, this verse is saying that the "Eucharist" is NOT a sacrifice that involves the real, actual re-presentation of Jesus' sacrifice that is performed on an physical altar by human priests - but rather a "sacrifice" that comes from the heart of the believer in the form of thanksgiving, praise, obedience, and love for others. The very verse you offered as support for your view completely destroys it and fully supports the Protestant view instead.

---

Here is the outline: don't slide back into ceremonial food law (v.9), we have a real altar you don't have access to (v.10), pointing to Christ's sacrifice outside the camp (v.11-13), and because of that we also offer praise and good works (v.15-16). That's addition, not swap. You've got cause and effect flipped, treating our response to the altar as if it erases the altar.

You've got the logic backwards. Verse 9's "foods" isn't saying eating in general is now some metaphor, it's talking about Jewish food laws, same thing Hebrews 9:10 already covers, "foods and drinks and various washings." It's saying don't get sucked back into Mosaic dietary rules, not "eating doesn't mean eating anymore."

Then verse 10 switches to a totally different image: an altar. "We have an altar those who serve the tent have no right to eat from." That keeps going with real priestly language, actual animals, actual blood, an actual high priest, burned outside the camp. The whole passage is set up as a parallel, their altar and eating vs. our altar and eating. If you want "eat" to suddenly mean something non-physical only on our side, you have to show me that in the text. You're just asserting it and it doesn't make any sense.

And verse 15 doesn't redefine verse 10, it adds to it. Nothing says "sacrifice of praise" replaces the altar. It's an extra exhortation, right next to verse 16's " do good and share." Those are the fruits that come from having the altar, not a reinterpretation that cancels it out. You're treating two separate things, the altar-eating in v.10 and the praise sacrifice in v.15, like the second one swallows the first. Hebrews never says that.

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You're looking at this passage with confirmation bias through your Orthodox lens, so you're reading it as a prescription for the New Covenant church to have the same system of temples, priests, altars, sacrifices, and the physical eating of the sacrifice that was characteristic of the Old Covenant. But this is completely missing the point the author is making, and is in fact going backwards from what the author intended. That old system is obsolete. There is NO MORE SACRIFICE. Jesus' sacrifice on the cross was the finished, once-for-all-time sacrifice for all sins, past, present and future. It completely eliminates the need for any further sacrifice."It is finished". Similarly, there is no more temple, because God now resides in the hearts of believers. There is no more organizational priesthood, because Jesus is now our one, true Priest who intercedes for us directly with God, and we are the "priesthood of believers". There is no more sacrificial "altar" to atone for our sins, because the final sacrifice has already been made. And there is no more literal, physical eating of the sacrifice - the "eating" is what we do when we, by believing in Jesus, gain spiritual sustenance leading to eternal life, which is superior to physical eating, which only gives us physical sustenance towards physical, temporal life. The point of Hebrews was to show that the New Covenant is made superior to the Old - the Old was only a type, a shadow of what was to come. The "altar" and "eating" language the author uses in this chapter in reference to the New Covenant is describing a new, higher, spiritual reality that is superior to the Old. The author is NOT making a one-to-one comparison with the Old Covenant to where the "eating" in the New is the same physical eating as in the Old, but rather a new, spiritual form of it.

Therefore, there is no need whatsoever for the communion bread and wine to contain the presence of Jesus in some "real" way in order for the communion "sacrifice" to be an actual, efficacious sacrifice. The efficacious sacrifice has already been completed. Jesus does not have to be "present" within the bread and wine of communion - he was present at the cross and that is all that was needed. The "Real Presence" of Jesus" in a repeated ceremonial sacrifice is a pure redundancy. And what's infinitely worse, it's actually a rejection of the finished work of Jesus on the cross. And this is what Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy formalize as dogma, a requirement for salvation. Absolutely incredible, and disgusting.

The fact that the author of Hebrews only tells us that the "eucharist" is a "sacrifice of praise"... never once mentioning anything about the sacrifice involving a kind of "real" presence within the communion bread and wine... is illustrative of all of this, and it completely invalidates your view. You're really reading HEAVILY your Orthodox theology into this passage, and your reasoning above is completely forced.

And it needs to be restated, that nowhere, not in Hebrews or anywhere else in Scripture are we told that if a believer takes communion as a symbol/memorial rather than as a "Real Presence", that there is any kind of loss for that believer, let alone salvation itself. A fact made evident by your complete failure to tell us what it is exactly that the believer misses out on. The Roman Catholics fail to do the same. Which reminds me to ask you again: if you really believe that Hebrews 13 and John 6 are telling you that "eating the sacrifice" is to be done in the same manner as in the Old Covenant.... then why aren't you holding to the Roman Catholic view?

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This might be borderline plausible if you just picked up a Bible and started reading it with absolutely no context. That's the problem, though. You can't interpret the Scripture without an understanding of historical Christian belief and practice (or "bias," as you call it).

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Translation: "You can't come to our (Roman Catholic) conclusion unless you hold our hand-picked church fathers as equal in authority to the Scriptures."

Historical Christianity needs to be viewed in context of Scripture, NOT the other way around. Historical Christianity involves fallible men trying to interpret and follow the infallible Word of God. And which history should we use as context to interpret Scripture? Church history was varied in opinion on many things, the nature of the Eucharist being a prime example. I can claim continuity with the early church for everything I've said, just as much as you say you can.

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No one holds the Church Fathers as equal in authority to the Scriptures. They are simply evidence of what the Scriptures meant to the early church. You reject them because they're fallible, then turn around and substitute your own fallible interpretation for theirs. You can't have it both ways.

As for your claim of continuity, it can't be taken seriously based on your quirky reading of an isolated quotation or two. As Doc demonstrated, and as most scholars would agree, the evidence for the Catholic view is overwhelming.

BUDOS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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BUDOS said:

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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.

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"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."

*** Point to exactly where I did what you say.

I'm pretty certain that your perceptions are highly biased and flawed. Let me point out that STILL, you are trying to shift the attention to a person's character and motivations, rather than the substance of what is being said. And when called out on it, all you did was double down as you did here. This is literally ALL YOU HAVE DONE here. This is ALL you have ever contributed.

Like Doc said, there are people here who have this "no one is really wrong" approach, which is so far from being true. And you are definitely one of them. Since we're freely dispensing personal evaluations here as you're always doing: you want warm, fuzzy discussions where everyone goes home happy with their beliefs. You cower from the hard truth. That's the real danger, NOT anything I'm doing. You constantly intepret the telling of hard truth as being "disrespectful". You constantly try to shame and scold those who are trying to tell the hard truth to people who need to hear it, like you're some kind of school teacher wagging your finger at children. You want "clarity"? Like I already said, you have been an enemy to truth and to clarity here. There is something really, really wrong with people who call themselves "Christian" and do what you do. Do want me to prove everything I'm saying here? Shall I ask your opinions about the tough truths about Mary and Roman Catholicism again, which you cowered from?

By the way, your "thanking" those who post comments in the manner you approve of, in an obvious attempt to manipulate the discussion, is just so passive-aggressive and so, so pathetic and nauseating. Seriously, can you STOP with the patronizing and personality evaluations, and engage the actual merits of the discussion, if you're even able? If you really want me to "consider" your posts, then this is the route - it's definitely NOT through scolding by someone whose opinion I have no reason to respect.

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BTD,
It is getting pretty obvious that you really are continuing your efforts to avoid the question. Is it that you either really don't know the answer to the question, or you don't want to answer it due to what it reveal about you?

Either way, I'm getting really tired of your religious narcissist behavior (according to its definition, not mine), so let's just move on, and perhaps we will take this issue up at a later time. One of the positives is that there are times you do make meaningful contributions to multiple discussions.

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No one knows what "question" you're talking about. The lack in your clarity continues. Neither are you able to point out exactly where I did all that you said above. You're once again called out, and you can't deliver. I'm just wondering how many times this has to happen before you realize that you're full of it, and that you should stop. Yes, my recent comments towards you have been rude, but you deserve it. You can't keep coming here and contribute absolutely nothing but personal aspersions, and expect to be treated with respect.

Sam Lowry said:

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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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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.

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Apparently, you do not understand Hebrews 13 at all.

NOTHING in Hebrews 13 says that the communion bread and wine are the "Real Presence" of Jesus, or that communion/the Eucharist is the replacement "ceremony" for the church that is the necessary means for us to receive some kind of grace. Where it says "those who serve the tent (Old Covenant Jews who still perform animal sacrifices) have no right to eat", the "eating" there is not literal. He's making the point that the New Covenant involves a higher form of "eating" that the Old Covenant Jews rejected. The "eating" isn't physical. This is made obvious by reading the verse immediately prior:

"... for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them."

The author clearly is setting up the meaning of "eating" in the following verse in the mind of the reader to convey something higher and more significant than the physical ingestion of food.

Verse 15, which you reference, perfectly illustrates how the author is elevating the concepts of "eating" and "sacrifice" to go BEYOND, not be identical to, their meaning in the Old Covenant way:

"Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God."

It's really odd how you can read a verse thinking it makes your argument, when it completely destroys it. Clearly, this verse is saying that the "Eucharist" is NOT a sacrifice that involves the real, actual re-presentation of Jesus' sacrifice that is performed on an physical altar by human priests - but rather a "sacrifice" that comes from the heart of the believer in the form of thanksgiving, praise, obedience, and love for others. The very verse you offered as support for your view completely destroys it and fully supports the Protestant view instead.

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Here is the outline: don't slide back into ceremonial food law (v.9), we have a real altar you don't have access to (v.10), pointing to Christ's sacrifice outside the camp (v.11-13), and because of that we also offer praise and good works (v.15-16). That's addition, not swap. You've got cause and effect flipped, treating our response to the altar as if it erases the altar.

You've got the logic backwards. Verse 9's "foods" isn't saying eating in general is now some metaphor, it's talking about Jewish food laws, same thing Hebrews 9:10 already covers, "foods and drinks and various washings." It's saying don't get sucked back into Mosaic dietary rules, not "eating doesn't mean eating anymore."

Then verse 10 switches to a totally different image: an altar. "We have an altar those who serve the tent have no right to eat from." That keeps going with real priestly language, actual animals, actual blood, an actual high priest, burned outside the camp. The whole passage is set up as a parallel, their altar and eating vs. our altar and eating. If you want "eat" to suddenly mean something non-physical only on our side, you have to show me that in the text. You're just asserting it and it doesn't make any sense.

And verse 15 doesn't redefine verse 10, it adds to it. Nothing says "sacrifice of praise" replaces the altar. It's an extra exhortation, right next to verse 16's " do good and share." Those are the fruits that come from having the altar, not a reinterpretation that cancels it out. You're treating two separate things, the altar-eating in v.10 and the praise sacrifice in v.15, like the second one swallows the first. Hebrews never says that.

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You're looking at this passage with confirmation bias through your Orthodox lens, so you're reading it as a prescription for the New Covenant church to have the same system of temples, priests, altars, sacrifices, and the physical eating of the sacrifice that was characteristic of the Old Covenant. But this is completely missing the point the author is making, and is in fact going backwards from what the author intended. That old system is obsolete. There is NO MORE SACRIFICE. Jesus' sacrifice on the cross was the finished, once-for-all-time sacrifice for all sins, past, present and future. It completely eliminates the need for any further sacrifice."It is finished". Similarly, there is no more temple, because God now resides in the hearts of believers. There is no more organizational priesthood, because Jesus is now our one, true Priest who intercedes for us directly with God, and we are the "priesthood of believers". There is no more sacrificial "altar" to atone for our sins, because the final sacrifice has already been made. And there is no more literal, physical eating of the sacrifice - the "eating" is what we do when we, by believing in Jesus, gain spiritual sustenance leading to eternal life, which is superior to physical eating, which only gives us physical sustenance towards physical, temporal life. The point of Hebrews was to show that the New Covenant is made superior to the Old - the Old was only a type, a shadow of what was to come. The "altar" and "eating" language the author uses in this chapter in reference to the New Covenant is describing a new, higher, spiritual reality that is superior to the Old. The author is NOT making a one-to-one comparison with the Old Covenant to where the "eating" in the New is the same physical eating as in the Old, but rather a new, spiritual form of it.

Therefore, there is no need whatsoever for the communion bread and wine to contain the presence of Jesus in some "real" way in order for the communion "sacrifice" to be an actual, efficacious sacrifice. The efficacious sacrifice has already been completed. Jesus does not have to be "present" within the bread and wine of communion - he was present at the cross and that is all that was needed. The "Real Presence" of Jesus" in a repeated ceremonial sacrifice is a pure redundancy. And what's infinitely worse, it's actually a rejection of the finished work of Jesus on the cross. And this is what Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy formalize as dogma, a requirement for salvation. Absolutely incredible, and disgusting.

The fact that the author of Hebrews only tells us that the "eucharist" is a "sacrifice of praise"... never once mentioning anything about the sacrifice involving a kind of "real" presence within the communion bread and wine... is illustrative of all of this, and it completely invalidates your view. You're really reading HEAVILY your Orthodox theology into this passage, and your reasoning above is completely forced.

And it needs to be restated, that nowhere, not in Hebrews or anywhere else in Scripture are we told that if a believer takes communion as a symbol/memorial rather than as a "Real Presence", that there is any kind of loss for that believer, let alone salvation itself. A fact made evident by your complete failure to tell us what it is exactly that the believer misses out on. The Roman Catholics fail to do the same. Which reminds me to ask you again: if you really believe that Hebrews 13 and John 6 are telling you that "eating the sacrifice" is to be done in the same manner as in the Old Covenant.... then why aren't you holding to the Roman Catholic view?

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This might be borderline plausible if you just picked up a Bible and started reading it with absolutely no context. That's the problem, though. You can't interpret the Scripture without an understanding of historical Christian belief and practice (or "bias," as you call it).

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Translation: "You can't come to our (Roman Catholic) conclusion unless you hold our hand-picked church fathers as equal in authority to the Scriptures."

Historical Christianity needs to be viewed in context of Scripture, NOT the other way around. Historical Christianity involves fallible men trying to interpret and follow the infallible Word of God. And which history should we use as context to interpret Scripture? Church history was varied in opinion on many things, the nature of the Eucharist being a prime example. I can claim continuity with the early church for everything I've said, just as much as you say you can.

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No one holds the Church Fathers as equal in authority to the Scriptures. They are simply evidence of what the Scriptures meant to the early church. You reject them because they're fallible, then turn around and substitute your own fallible interpretation for theirs. You can't have it both ways.

As for your claim of continuity, it can't be taken seriously based on your quirky reading of an isolated quotation or two. As Doc demonstrated, and as most scholars would agree, the evidence for the Catholic view is overwhelming.

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Exactly, and the evidence is actually unanimous. Every single early Church father shared the real presence and believed it to be His body and blood, not symbolic. They are almost forced to view Church history as purely optional background noise rather than the living witness of how the early Christians actually practiced what the Apostles taught.

Neither John Calvin nor the early Presbyterian standards held the "it's just a symbol" view. They explicitly condemned Zwingli's purely memorial view as inadequate and overly bare. Its also a departure from the reformers.

You basically have to take the position that all the early Church fathers were in error and the Church went dark right after Pentecost. Some protestants actually believe that and share that same view with mormons.

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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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.

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Apparently, you do not understand Hebrews 13 at all.

NOTHING in Hebrews 13 says that the communion bread and wine are the "Real Presence" of Jesus, or that communion/the Eucharist is the replacement "ceremony" for the church that is the necessary means for us to receive some kind of grace. Where it says "those who serve the tent (Old Covenant Jews who still perform animal sacrifices) have no right to eat", the "eating" there is not literal. He's making the point that the New Covenant involves a higher form of "eating" that the Old Covenant Jews rejected. The "eating" isn't physical. This is made obvious by reading the verse immediately prior:

"... for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them."

The author clearly is setting up the meaning of "eating" in the following verse in the mind of the reader to convey something higher and more significant than the physical ingestion of food.

Verse 15, which you reference, perfectly illustrates how the author is elevating the concepts of "eating" and "sacrifice" to go BEYOND, not be identical to, their meaning in the Old Covenant way:

"Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God."

It's really odd how you can read a verse thinking it makes your argument, when it completely destroys it. Clearly, this verse is saying that the "Eucharist" is NOT a sacrifice that involves the real, actual re-presentation of Jesus' sacrifice that is performed on an physical altar by human priests - but rather a "sacrifice" that comes from the heart of the believer in the form of thanksgiving, praise, obedience, and love for others. The very verse you offered as support for your view completely destroys it and fully supports the Protestant view instead.

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Here is the outline: don't slide back into ceremonial food law (v.9), we have a real altar you don't have access to (v.10), pointing to Christ's sacrifice outside the camp (v.11-13), and because of that we also offer praise and good works (v.15-16). That's addition, not swap. You've got cause and effect flipped, treating our response to the altar as if it erases the altar.

You've got the logic backwards. Verse 9's "foods" isn't saying eating in general is now some metaphor, it's talking about Jewish food laws, same thing Hebrews 9:10 already covers, "foods and drinks and various washings." It's saying don't get sucked back into Mosaic dietary rules, not "eating doesn't mean eating anymore."

Then verse 10 switches to a totally different image: an altar. "We have an altar those who serve the tent have no right to eat from." That keeps going with real priestly language, actual animals, actual blood, an actual high priest, burned outside the camp. The whole passage is set up as a parallel, their altar and eating vs. our altar and eating. If you want "eat" to suddenly mean something non-physical only on our side, you have to show me that in the text. You're just asserting it and it doesn't make any sense.

And verse 15 doesn't redefine verse 10, it adds to it. Nothing says "sacrifice of praise" replaces the altar. It's an extra exhortation, right next to verse 16's " do good and share." Those are the fruits that come from having the altar, not a reinterpretation that cancels it out. You're treating two separate things, the altar-eating in v.10 and the praise sacrifice in v.15, like the second one swallows the first. Hebrews never says that.

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You're looking at this passage with confirmation bias through your Orthodox lens, so you're reading it as a prescription for the New Covenant church to have the same system of temples, priests, altars, sacrifices, and the physical eating of the sacrifice that was characteristic of the Old Covenant. But this is completely missing the point the author is making, and is in fact going backwards from what the author intended. That old system is obsolete. There is NO MORE SACRIFICE. Jesus' sacrifice on the cross was the finished, once-for-all-time sacrifice for all sins, past, present and future. It completely eliminates the need for any further sacrifice."It is finished". Similarly, there is no more temple, because God now resides in the hearts of believers. There is no more organizational priesthood, because Jesus is now our one, true Priest who intercedes for us directly with God, and we are the "priesthood of believers". There is no more sacrificial "altar" to atone for our sins, because the final sacrifice has already been made. And there is no more literal, physical eating of the sacrifice - the "eating" is what we do when we, by believing in Jesus, gain spiritual sustenance leading to eternal life, which is superior to physical eating, which only gives us physical sustenance towards physical, temporal life. The point of Hebrews was to show that the New Covenant is made superior to the Old - the Old was only a type, a shadow of what was to come. The "altar" and "eating" language the author uses in this chapter in reference to the New Covenant is describing a new, higher, spiritual reality that is superior to the Old. The author is NOT making a one-to-one comparison with the Old Covenant to where the "eating" in the New is the same physical eating as in the Old, but rather a new, spiritual form of it.

Therefore, there is no need whatsoever for the communion bread and wine to contain the presence of Jesus in some "real" way in order for the communion "sacrifice" to be an actual, efficacious sacrifice. The efficacious sacrifice has already been completed. Jesus does not have to be "present" within the bread and wine of communion - he was present at the cross and that is all that was needed. The "Real Presence" of Jesus" in a repeated ceremonial sacrifice is a pure redundancy. And what's infinitely worse, it's actually a rejection of the finished work of Jesus on the cross. And this is what Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy formalize as dogma, a requirement for salvation. Absolutely incredible, and disgusting.

The fact that the author of Hebrews only tells us that the "eucharist" is a "sacrifice of praise"... never once mentioning anything about the sacrifice involving a kind of "real" presence within the communion bread and wine... is illustrative of all of this, and it completely invalidates your view. You're really reading HEAVILY your Orthodox theology into this passage, and your reasoning above is completely forced.

And it needs to be restated, that nowhere, not in Hebrews or anywhere else in Scripture are we told that if a believer takes communion as a symbol/memorial rather than as a "Real Presence", that there is any kind of loss for that believer, let alone salvation itself. A fact made evident by your complete failure to tell us what it is exactly that the believer misses out on. The Roman Catholics fail to do the same. Which reminds me to ask you again: if you really believe that Hebrews 13 and John 6 are telling you that "eating the sacrifice" is to be done in the same manner as in the Old Covenant.... then why aren't you holding to the Roman Catholic view?

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Neither Orthodoxy nor Catholicism teaches Christ is sacrificed again at each liturgy. Hebrews itself says "once for all" (9:26-28), and Orthodox theology fully affirms that. What's claimed is that the one, finished sacrifice is made truly present and truly participated in at each Eucharist, not repeated, not added to, or improved on. You don't know our theology man. Seriously, this is basic stuff we don't believe…

On "no more altar, temple, priesthood," you're asserting all of that, but Hebrews itself doesn't erase this language, it keeps using it in the present tense about the church. "We have an altar" (13:10) is present tense, not "we used to have." If everything physical/institutional was dissolved into pure inward spirituality, why does the author keep reaching for priest, altar, sacrifice, blood language to describe what Christians presently have, rather than simply saying "you don't need any of that anymore"? You're reading your conclusion into the tense of the verbs.

You haven't shown me where the text itself says "eating" here means something non-physical. You've given me a theological system (finished sacrifice, priesthood of all believers, indwelling Spirit) and then used that system to tell me what "eat" must mean here. You're reading a system into a text.

Rome dogmatizes a specific philosophical mechanism, transubstantiation. They try to explain it scientifically and break it apart (that's nominalism btw). Orthodoxy affirms the reality of the change without dogmatizing the metaphysical mechanism, it's held as a mystery, not explained.

I did answer what's missed, repeatedly, real union with Christ's life, tied to actual resurrection (John 6:54), the actual participation Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 10:16. You calling that answer invisible doesn't make it invisible.

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Nowhere did I say that RC/Orthodoxy "sacrifices again" in the Eucharist. What I said about their view, is clearly the official view of those churches: that the Eucharist is an actual, propitiatory sacrifice. Yes, I do know your theology. You should know by know that I'm not gonna claim things that I can't back up.

As I've clearly said, Hebrews isn't "erasing" the language of "altar", "priest", "temple", etc. it's elevating them to a new, superior form that is the ultimate realization of the Old Covenant types. Your problem is that you're still reading them through Old Covenant lenses.

On "eating" being figurative, rather than literal: you're missing the context that the author of Hebrews himself set up in the previous verse, where he says we are to be strengthened by grace, NOT by foods - in other words, by a spiritual, non-physical form of sustenance, i.e. "eating". The author is carrying over this same idea into his very next verse, where he says those Old Covenant Jews who reject Jesus have "no right" to "eat" this way because they rejected him. Even apart from this, the idea of a spiritual form of "eating" goes right along with the entire message of the book, which is that the Old Covenant types of of temples, priests, sacrifice, and "eating" have all now been realized in their new, superior, and spiritual form where their nature and significance have been perfected. It's hardly conceivable that this author of Hebrews would really be saying that physically putting something into our stomachs is this new and superior way we are reconciled with God.

And one only needs to look at Scripture to confirm all of this - the repeated declarations that salvation is by faith, that believing in Jesus from the heart is how one is justified, and in the direct examples where people were saved or told how to be saved, without physically eating a single thing, or told that they had to.

"I did answer what's missed, repeatedly" - and your answer is completely invalidated by Scripture. You can't even hold your answer consistent with your own theology. It falls apart every time the thief, sinful woman of Luke 7, and the house of Cornelius, none of whom ate anything, are brought up. It completely falls apart with Jesus words in John 6:40. Seriously - if you honestly believe that physically eating something is the way we receive the grace of salvation, then you simply do not understand the Gospel. It's a thinking like Nicodemus, when he tried to understand being "born again" in physical terms. It's a worrisome sign that you may have not truly been regenerated by the Spirit.

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You're building a straw man by confusing initial justification with the sacramental life of the Christian. Neither Catholic nor Orthodox theology teaches that 'physically putting something into our stomach' is how a person gets regenerated or initially justified, which is why bringing up the Thief on the Cross, Luke 7, or Cornelius is a false binary.

Faith is the necessary prerequisite to receive grace worthily. Paul explicitly says in 1 Corinthians 11 that eating without faith/discernment brings judgment, not magic salvation. Sacraments do not replace faith: they're the physical conduits through which God imparts grace to the faithful, just as Jesus used physical spit and mud to heal the blind man, or water in baptism (1 Peter 3:21).

In verse 9, 'foods' (brmasin) refers specifically to the Levitical dietary laws and Old Covenant sacrificial meat that Judaizers were claiming Christians needed to adhere to for ritual purity. The author of Hebrews isn't rejecting physical sacramental eating in general, he's telling Hebrew Christians: Stop going back to the Levitical meats for spiritual strength. We have our OWN altar from which those who serve the old tabernacle have no right to eat.
If 'altar' and 'eat' in verse 10 are purely allegorical for 'believing in Jesus,' then Old Covenant priests would have a right to it, because anyone can believe in Jesus. The contrast only makes sense if the Christian altar refers to the unique, physical Eucharistic meal reserved exclusively for those in the New Covenant.

The Eucharist is a re-presentation (making present) of the one, once-for-all sacrifice of Calvary, applied to the church across time. In Malachi 1:11, God prophesied that in every place among the Gentiles, a 'pure grain offering' (minchah, a sacrificial word) would be made to His name. That isn't a metaphor for prayer; it was understood from the 1st century onward as the fulfillment of the Eucharistic sacrifice.

The crux of the issue isn't just bread and wine, it's how each tradition views salvation. There's three competing views here:

Low-church Calvinism and radical reformers rely heavily on 19th-century revivalist frameworks that treat salvation as a one-time legal decree locking in your destiny forever. SO for them communion doesn't do anything at all. None of the sacraments mean anything, in fact they seem pagan to them.

Arminian Protestants at least recognize that a believer can fall away from the faith, which opens the door for sacraments as means of grace.

Orthodoxy views salvation as a relational, lifelong process of theosis: a dynamic union with God where perseverance and receiving Christ's real life in the Eucharist are essential to abiding in the Vine.