Drink jesus' (God's)blood? Eat his flesh?

[Avoice]

Human sacrifice
Drinking blood
Eating human flesh

You cant get any more pagan than this


Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.

NOW HERE IS WHAT THE GOD OF ISRAEL SAID THROUGH THE PROPHET ISAIAH.

"They have not known nor understood: for he hath shut their eyes, that they cannot see; and their hearts, that they cannot understand. And none considereth in his heart, neither is there knowledge nor understanding to say, I have burned part of it in the fire; yea, also I have baked bread upon the coals thereof; I have roasted flesh, and eaten it: and shall I make the residue thereof an abomination? shall I fall down to the stock of a tree? He feedeth on ashes: a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?"

THINK!
EAT Jesus/ GOD?
DRINK the blood of Jesus/ GOD?

[2timothy316]

[Replying to post 168 by 2timothy316]

How can you say Justin Martyr was teaching apostasy whenno one else agreed with your position for 950 years later"

Agreement with me doesn't make something true.

John said, "Young children, it is the last hour, and just as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared, from which fact we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of our sort; for if they had been of our sort, they would have remained with us. But they went out so that it might be shown that not all are of our sort." - 1 John 2:18, 19

Even before the death of John there were apostates filtering into the Christian congregation. Teaching things that John and the other apostles did not. Note the words, "the last hour". John was likely realizing that the end of the time of the apostles was coming.

John doesn't agree with me, I am in agreement with him. Justin Martyr didn't know Jesus, never met him, didn't see him die, and neither him or his writings are mentioned in the Holy Scriptures. So to me, his writings are no more holy than the a good fiction novel.

Your response does beg a few questions though. Is truth to you how many people agree with it? Is truth to you how long someone has or has not agreed to believing a certain doctrine?

[Saber Bob]

[Replying to post 171 by 2timothy316]

Essentially this is opening up another thread topic, "The Great Apostasy", and many of the made in America sects, teaching wildly contradictory versions of it: Jehovah's Witnesses, Latter-day Saints, Church of Christ, Christian Science, original Armstrong Worldwide Church of God, etc...rely on it but two small but insurmountable problems:

1. It utterly contradicts history.

2. It utterly contradicts Scripture.

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 172 by Saber Bob]

How does the idea of an apostacy contradict scripture?

JW

[marco]

[Replying to marco]

Marco,

Drop Transubstantion for the moment. Does Scripture teach the Real Presence, yes or no?

The idea of the Real Presence is taken from a literal interpretation of Christ's words: "This is my body" and "This is my blood". When it is pointed out to you that Christ famously employed extravagant metaphors, you simply answer: "Not here." I see no justification for this exception, since it involves believing the same kind of absurdity couched in a literal interpretation of "being born again."

You are using truth by declaration. It does not matter that there are many years of acceptance of a literal change in the host; an error is an error regardless of its date of birth.

Elizabeth 1 wisely declined from declaring one way or another: "'Twas Christ the Lord that spake it, he took the bread and brake it; and what the Lord did make it, this I believe, and take it."

As with the Trinity doctrine, a whole assemblage of abstract terms, to deter the timid, has been brought to bear on the mystery; and verbal niceties are observed to make an effective miracle. The priest says: This is my body, but would invalidly say: This bread is my body. There was a boyhood time when I bowed in awed reverence at the tinkle of the consecration bell but there is a tale of a little boy who spoke honestly about the Emperor's nakedness.

Having said this I still find that the faith that believes Jesus slips invisibly but miraculously on to the tongue, to the sound of "corpus Christi" or its translated equivalent, is indeed the stuff that moves mountains. Nothing in the New Testament justifies it. Can such a robust belief rise from falsehood? Watch a million bowed backs at Mecca. It is faith of the same material. Frightening in its way.

[marco]

[Replying to post 171 by 2timothy316]

Essentially this is opening up another thread topic, "The Great Apostasy", and many of the made in America sects, teaching wildly contradictory versions of it: Jehovah's Witnesses, Latter-day Saints, Church of Christ, Christian Science, original Armstrong Worldwide Church of God, etc...rely on it but two small but insurmountable problems:

1. It utterly contradicts history.

2. It utterly contradicts Scripture.

I will say this for Rome. If one is hungry for salvation, weary of mental struggle and ready to wait in one of heaven's anterooms, then the one, holy, catholic and apostolic route seems the prudent choice, even in Pascal's terms.

If the cost of a ticket to heaven is belief in the improbable or impossible, the word "credo" is not hard to say. Verification can come on arrival.

[Saber Bob]

[Replying to post 174 by marco]

Good morning Marco,

While your prose is undeniably more elegant than mine, it is also undeniably a way of claiming Jesus was speaking metaphorically and symbolically about the Eucharist without offering any textual evidence that he was.

Simply put, just because he used a metaphor on one place does not mean he used it in the Eucharist. You have to do more than assert, declare a position, you have to follow through. Your rejection of your boyhood belief does not mean that your later disbelief was correct-- this is a variation of the Chronological Snobbery Fallacy, namely that a later, newer position is more valid because it is more recent.

John 6, six times Jesus confirmed his listeners' literal understanding of " eat my flesh and drink my blood". In private with the 12, Jesus provided no alternative meaning. The cultural figurative meaning if applied makes Jesus speaking nonsense, so we are left with the literal
John wrote no explanation like he did with "tear this Temple down..."

No one here as even addressed this, not really. They assert, but they offer no proof, other than Jesus used parables and metaphors. But unless he always and without exceptions spoke symbolically, NEVER spoke literally, then their assertions do not apply to John 6 or the Last Supper accounts.

[marco]

Simply put, just because he used a metaphor on one place does not mean he used it in the Eucharist.

That is true, but it gives us a reason for taking a figurative interpretation. The passage in John does not in any way prove Jesus was talking literally.


33 For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world.

34 Then said they unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread.

35 And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.

Jesus, being the word of God, is the supplier of spiritual nourishment. When he recommends that people pray he says: "Give us this day our daily bread." I think it is clear he is not talking about the real presence here, but about spiritual nourishment, the power to resist temptation, to be good souls.

Notice that Jesus did not say: He that receives the host - but instead, he that "cometh to me; "and " he that believeth in me." Methinks you read too much into too little. In the end if you accept Jesus is present in the host then with Tertullian you believe because it is absurd, not through some rational interpretation of somebody's words. Faith leads you and for many that is sufficient. For many it is a blessing, and my mother would be the first to agree as she moves slowly through her beads for the redemption of her apostate son.

They assert, but they offer no proof, other than Jesus used parables and metaphors. But unless he always and without exceptions spoke symbolically, NEVER spoke literally, then their assertions do not apply to John 6 or the Last Supper accounts.

I think you are moving into unsafe ground here. There is no intention to declare Jesus never spoke literally, for this would be blatantly wrong. The issue here is whether one accepts a literal or a figurative interpretation of "This is my body." I am saying that Jesus had a predilection for figurative language, so given the colossal difficulties of a literal interpretation one is entitled to prefer a figurative one. Those who want a literal interpretation have a lot to do to justify this, since it requires a miracle. Those that take a figurative meaning do not have to prove anything.

You may well be right in your choice, but it is far from obvious.

[marco]

That's it folks. You heard it straight from Jesus. His job was done. God has no more for him to do. Thats it. Show is over. Come back? He said his work was finished.

When preparations are finished for, say, the Olympic Games people do not go home; on the contrary the flock to what has been prepared.

If Jesus was on a mission, then when he declares that he has fulfilled his mission people start to get the benefits of what he did and follow his instructions. They don't go back to what was.


It is easy to pick holes in any of the Abrahamic religions so why concentrate on Christianity. Criticism, like charity, begins at home surely.

[Saber Bob]

[Replying to post 177 by marco]

Was Jesus speaking literally or figuratively when he spoke about coming down from heaven? Was Jesus speaking literally or figuratively about ascending back to heaven in v. 60-61.

If literally, then there is no grounds for rejecting the literal meaning of "eat my flesh and drink my blood" and, especially since Jesus confirmed his listeners' literal understanding of both. You have pointedly not dealt with that issue nor can you.

In his conversion story Rome Sweet Home Scott Hahn recounts while a Presbyterian and very anti-Catholic minister, he had been hired at a Protestant seminary to teach a seminar on the Gospel of John. Everything was going great, until he got to the BoL discource at 6:27. Hahn, realized he had never had a thorough teaching of that section, so he dived into it, to teach himself before teaching the class. With increasing horror, Hahn realized he could not find any way around the Catholic interpretation being the most direct, the most coherent, and the most lucid. So Scott did the only thing any Protestant minister and teacher could do under those circumstances...

In teaching the class, he skipped over the BoL discource.

While Tertullian was a wee over the top, essentially he confirmed that the Eucharist is about faith, about discerning spiritual things with spiritual discernment, as per Rom 8:1-8, etc.. The best objections to the Doctrine of Transubstantion are actually from both the Eastern Orthodox and the Lutherans, by saying the RP is to believed by faith in the clear revelation of Holy Scripture and Apostolic Tradition (Luther, while the formal founder of Sola Scriptura, was aghast that Zwingli could state the Church Fathers held a pure symbolic understanding of the Eucharist).

[2timothy316]

[Replying to post 172 by Saber Bob]

How does the idea of an apostasy contradict scripture?

JW

I'd like to point out that Saber Bob completely skipped this question.