Bible Heaven/Bible Heaven.iso/misc/answers/answers.008

Text File | 1990-07-10 | 12KB | 198 lines

                          The Eucharist

     Fundamentalist attacks on the Catholic religion usually
focus on the Eucharist.  This demonstrates opponents of the
Church recognize what Catholicism's core devotional doctrine is.
What's more, the attacks show fundamentalists are not always
literalists.  This is seen in their interpretation of the key
Bible passage, chapter six of St. John's Gospel, in which Christ
speaks about the sacrament that will be instituted at the Last
Supper.  This tract examines the last half of that chapter.
     John 6:30 begins a colloquy which took place in the
synagogue at Capharnaum.  The Jews asked Jesus what sign he could
perform, and, as a challenge, they noted that "our fathers had
manna to eat in the desert."  Could Jesus top that?  He told them
the real bread from heaven comes from the Father.  "Give us this
bread," they asked. Jesus replied, "It is I who am the bread of
life."  At this point the Jews understood him to be speaking
metaphorically.
     Jesus first repeated what he said, then summarized: "I
myself am the bread that has come down from heaven.  If anyone
eats of this bread, he shall live forever.  And now, what is this
bread that I am to give?  It is my flesh, given for the life of
the world."  The Jews, incredulous, asked, "How can this man give
us his flesh to eat?"
     His listeners were stupefied because now they understood
Jesus literally--and correctly.  He again repeated his words, but
with even greater emphasis, and introduced the statement about
drinking His blood: "You can have no life in yourselves, unless
you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood.  The
man who eats my flesh and drinks my blood enjoys eternal life,
and I will raise him up on the last day.  My flesh is real food,
my blood is real drink.  He who eats my flesh, and drinks my
blood, lives continually in me, and I in him" (John 6:54-57).
     Notice Jesus made no attempt to soften what he said, no
attempt to correct "misunderstandings," for there were none.  Our
Lord's listeners understood him perfectly well.  They no longer
thought he was speaking metaphorically.  If they had, if they
mistook what he said, why no correction?  On other occasions,
whenever there was confusion, Christ explained just what he
meant.  Here, where any misunderstanding would be fatal, there
was no effort to correct.  Instead, he repeated himself.
     In John 6:61 we read: "There were many of his disciples who
said, when they heard it, This is strange talk, who can be
expected to listen to it?"  These were his disciples, mind you,
people who were used to his remarkable ways.  He warned them not
to think carnally, but spiritually: "Only the spirit gives life;
the flesh is of no avail; and the words I have been speaking to
you are spirit, and life."  But he knew some did not believe,
including the one who was to betray him.  (It is here, in the
rejection of the Eucharist, that Judas fell away; look at John
6:65.)  "After this, many of his disciples went back to their own
ways, and walked no more in his company" (John 6:67).
     This is the only record we have of any of Christ's followers
forsaking him for purely doctrinal reasons.  If it had all been a
misunderstanding, if they erred in taking a metaphor in a literal
sense, why didn't he call them back and straighten things out?
Both the Jews, who were suspicious of him, and his disciples, who
had accepted everything up to this point, would have remained had
he told them he meant no more than a figure or a token.
     But he did not correct these first protesters.  Twelve times
he said he was the bread that came down from heaven; four times
he said they would have "to eat my flesh and drink my blood."
John 6 was an extended promise of what would be instituted at the
Last Supper--and it was a promise that could not be more
explicit.  Or so it would seem to a Catholic.  But what do
fundamentalists say?
     They say that in John 6 Jesus was not talking about
physical, but spiritual food and drink.  They quote John 6:35:
"It is I who am the bread of life; he who comes to me will never
be hungry, he who has faith in me will never know thirst."  They
claim coming to him is bread, having faith in him is drink.
Thus, eating his flesh and blood merely means believing in
Christ.
     But there is a problem with that interpretation.  As Fr.
John O'Brien explains, "The phrase 'to eat the flesh and drink
the blood,' when used figuratively among the Jews, as among the
Arabs of today, meant to inflict upon a person some serious
injury, especially by calumny or by false accusation.  To
interpret the phrase figuratively then would be to make our Lord
promise life everlasting to the culprit for slandering and hating
him, which would reduce the whole passage to utter nonsense."

     Fundamentalist writers who comment on John 6 also assert one
can show Christ was speaking only metaphorically by comparing
verses like John 10:9 ("I am the door") and John 15:1 ("I am the
true vine").  The problem is that there is no real connection to
John 6:35: "It is I who am the bread of life."  "I am the door"
and "I am the vine" make sense as metaphors because Christ is
like a door--we go to heaven through him--and he is also like a
vine--we get our spiritual sap through him.  But Christ takes
John 6:35 far beyond a mere metaphor.  He excludes any symbolism
by saying, "My flesh is real food, my blood is real drink" (John
6:6:56). He goes on: "As I live because of the Father, the living
Father who has sent me, so he who eats me will live, in his turn,
because of me" (John 6:58).  The Greek word used for "eats" is
very blunt and has the sense of "gnaws."  This is not the
language of metaphor.
     For fundamentalist writers, the scriptural argument is
capped by an appeal to John 6:63: "Only the spirit gives life;
the flesh is of no avail; and the words I have been speaking to
you are spirit, and life."  They say this means that eating real
flesh is a waste.  But does this makes sense?  Are we to
understand that Christ, who had just commanded his disciples to
eat his flesh, then said their doing so would be pointless?  Is
that what "the flesh is of no avail" means?  "Eat my flesh, but
you'll find it's a waste of time"--is that what he was saying?
And were the disciples to understand the line "the words I have
been speaking to you are spirit, and life" as nothing but a
circumlocution (and a clumsy one at that) for "symbolic"?  No one
can come up such interpretations unless he first holds to the
fundamentalist position and thinks it necessary to find a
rationale, no matter how forced, for evading the Catholic
interpretation.  In John 6:63 "flesh" does not refer to Christ's
own flesh--the context makes this clear--but to mankind's
inclination to think on a natural, not a spiritual, level.  And
"The words I have been speaking to you are spirit" does not mean
"What I have just said is symbolic."  The word "spirit" is never
used that way in the Bible.  The line means that what Christ has
said will be understood only through faith.
     Anti-Catholics also claim the early Church took this chapter
symbolically.  Is that so?  Let's see what some early Christians
thought, keeping in mind that we can learn much about how
Scripture should be interpreted by examining the writings of
early Christians.
     Ignatius of Antioch, who had been a disciple of the Apostle
John and who wrote an epistle to the Smyrnaeans about A.D. 110,
said, referring to "those who hold heterodox opinions," that
"they abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do
not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus
Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father,
in his goodness, raised up again."
     Forty years later, Justin Martyr wrote, "Not as common bread
nor common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our
Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh
and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the
food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic
prayer set down by him, and by the change of which our blood and
flesh is nourished, is both the flesh and the blood of that
incarnated Jesus."
     Origen, in a homily written about A.D. 244, attested to
belief in the Real Presence.  "I wish to admonish you with
examples from your religion.  You are accustomed to take part in
the divine mysteries, so you know how, when you have received the
Body of the Lord, you reverently exercise every care lest a
particle of it fall and lest anything of the consecrated gift
perish.  You account yourselves guilty, and rightly do you so
believe, if any of it be lost through negligence."
     Athanasius, who was bishop of Alexandria, said this in A.D.
373 to some newly baptized Christians: "So long as the prayers of
supplication and entreaties have not been made, there is only
bread and wine.  But after the great and wonderful prayers have
been completed, then the bread is become the Body, and the wine
the Blood, of our Lord Jesus Christ."
     As a final example (taken from dozens that could have been
used), Cyril of Jerusalem, in a catechetical lecture presented in
the middle of the fourth century, said:  "Do not, therefore,
regard the Bread and Wine as simply that; for they are, according
to the Master's declaration, the Body and Blood of Christ.  Even
though the senses suggest to you the other, let faith make you
firm.  Do not judge in this matter by taste, but be fully assured
by faith, not doubting that you have been deemed worthy of the
Body and Blood of Christ."
     Whatever else might be said, it is certain the early Church
took John 6 literally.  In fact, there is no record from the
early centuries that implies Christians doubted the constant
Catholic interpretation.  There exists no document in which the
literal interpretation is opposed and only the metaphorical
accepted.
     Then why do fundamentalists so ardently reject the literal
interpretation of John 6?  Their problem is that their religion
largely lacks the mysterious.  (A mystery is a truth which can be
known only by revelation, not by reason.)  More precisely, they
acknowledge only those mysteries which are purely spiritual, such
as the Trinity.  They know the doctrine of the Trinity has been
revealed, that something about the Trinity can be known, that
certain deductions can be drawn from what is known, and they
realize that the essence of the Trinity lies beyond human
comprehension, and they are happy to leave it at that.  But, when
it comes to mysteries that involve the mixing of spirit and
matter--that is, when it comes to the sacraments--a kind of
Docetism shows.
     For fundamentalists, Catholic sacraments are out because
they necessitate a spiritual reality, grace, being conveyed by
means of matter.  This seems a violation of the divine plan.
Matter is not to be used, but overcome or avoided, and in this
lies the unease with which Protestantism has always viewed the
Incarnation.  One suspects, had they been asked by the Creator
their opinion of how to effect mankind's salvation,
fundamentalists would have advised him to adopt a different
approach.  How cleaner things would be if spirit never dirtied
itself with matter!  But God, quite literally, loves matter--and
he loves it so much that he comes to us under the appearance of
bread and wine.

                                        --Karl Keating
                                          Catholic Answers
                                          P.O. Box 17181
                                          San Diego, CA 92117