Doubting Thomas said:
That's a big assumption. Communion is not specifically mentioned here but the parallels with Christ's statements at the Last Supper are obvious.
Yes, Christ starts off calling Himself the bread of Life (in contrast to the manna in the wilderness), but He becomes more specific identifying the bread He will give as His literal flesh, and later fulfilling His statement that we must eat His flesh by identifying the bread at communion with His body, thus providing the means by which the disciples could indeed eat His flesh. You have to keep in mind the LARGER context that John's Gospel was written towards the end of the first century, to the Church which already had been been taught about and partaking of communion for several decades.
No it doesn't--not unless you are reading docetic gnosticism into the text. Christ plainly identifies the flesh that we must eat to have eternal life--flesh that is "food indeed"--with the same flesh that He was giving for the life of the world: "and the bread that I shall give is My flesh which I shall give for the life of the world" (John 6:51). Are you now a docetist who claims that Christ's flesh was only spiritual and that he literally didn't give His flesh for the world through His physical death on the cross?
An assumption you've read into the text based on your particular presuppositions.
No, your insistence that Christ was actually
referring ahead to the literal "food" of a communion meal is based on your particular presuppositions. This is just like when a woman asks him about water, and he speaks of living waters. Is this pointing forward to some water being His body, or perhaps the sweat or water that came out on the Cross? Or is it the Holy Spirit that is literal water? Or perhaps a "real presence" in the waters of baptism? I have never heard either Catholics or Campbellists claim that one, (maybe I shouldn't give y'all any more ideas!:laugh
So Christ draws these analogies with real food, when someone mentions it.
The communion meal points back to Christ's metaphor of eating His flesh, and His literal flesh being "broken" for us on the Cross. You have it the other way around, where the physical bread is the "real deal" Christ points forward to, but there is even less scriptural justification from that. Premise is being stacked upon premise.
Yeah, they could (and did) see the wine and fish, and based on the miraculous that they could see, they certainly could trust Christ, whom they themselves had acknowledged as having the words of life (John 6:68), when He said that His "flesh" (the same flesh he was giving for the life of the world--v.51) was "food indeed" and His "blood" was "drink indeed" (v.55) and that one must eat His flesh and drink His blood to have eternal life and to abide in Christ (v.54, 56) and when He later called the bread "His body" and the cup "His blood" which His disciples then could indeed literally eat (crunch/chew) and drink, and thus have real communion with (partaking of/communication of/distribution of) the Body and Blood of Christ.
Yes,
later. He was not talking about the same thing in both instances. The later reference was called direcly by Him a "
remembrance", not the real deal He was speaking of all along.
Not at all--I'm demonstrating that the consensual view from the beginning is the same that is taught in the relevant texts as they are grammatically and contextually understood which clearly shows that Christ and His apostles meant this realistically and not merely metaphorically. You're simply misreading the clear statements because you are projecting later novel interpretations anachronistically back into the text. You say WTTE that "it has to be metaphorical", and "it has to only be referring to spiritual 'togetherness'"...thus assuming the points you are trying to prove while ignoring grammar and context.
But it is not taught in the texts, and is not clear. (else, it wouldn't be an "
oral tradition", would it?) You
project it there, not me; so that is what is "novel" regardless of it's "ancientness", and you define "realistically" as physical items having some sort of supernatural presence, rather than the original context of His death being the "breaking" of His flesh, and our
believing in Him being "partaking" of it, with Him being
spiritually in us.
But you are making that bald assertion while dismissing the grammatical context that Paul indeed calls THE BREAD and THE CUP the "communion of the body" and "blood" of Christ respectively. Scriptures thereby teach that one of the ways Christ specially manifests Himself to us is by giving His body and blood to us in Holy Communion.
It's a
remembrance. As we partake of the elements, it is a reminder of what He has done for us, almost like a new giving of it, but not, because ot was a once for all act.
Of course, Christ corrected their misunderstanding regarding the leaven. He didn't do so in John 6 about the bread being His flesh, the same flesh He was giving for the life of the world (flesh that was food indeed that must be eaten to have eternal life) since there was no misunderstanding to correct. He could have stopped and told the disciples "Hey, this is all just metaphorical", but instead He became progressively more and more specific in His identifications and realistic in His statements as His discourse continued. They understood what He meant, and the majority stumbled over it.
So you repeatedly assert while ignoring the grammatical/contextual fact that Paul calls the literal BREAD the "communion of the body of Christ" (and likewise calls the literal CUP the "communion of the blood of Christ"). The spiritual reality is that we have real communion with the real body and body of Christ through partaking of the bread and the wine.
I guess all this goes to show "the Bible says what it means and means what it says"...unless the plain grammatical meaning of the text disagrees with the presuppositions of solo-Scripturists. :smilewinkgrin:
Again, you misunderstand His whole parabolic style; just like the living water that would be given to us, so He is giving us living water (eternal life through the Spirit), and He is giving us His flesh (salvation through pardoning of sins when we believe). The two work together, covering the same thing. Your "plain grammatical meaning" is a red herring, because prarables and metaphors are often spoken in a literal fashion. What Christ goes on to say in that passage is "The flesh profits lnothing; the words that I speak, they are
spirit and life". Those people, with fleshy thinking, took it too literal, and Christ is here telling us it is spiritual. But you are making it some literal thing again, and only use "spirituality" to explain the resulting dilemma of why "it doesn't like like flesh".
