Agnus_Dei said:
And I’ll tell you as I told Bob, that the burden of proof is on you to prove that close to 2,000 years of Orthodoxy regarding the Real Presence is wrong and your Baptistic tradition is right.
Show me an early apostolic Baptist father prior to the reformation that taught otherwise, that wasn’t condemned a heretic.
So addy up Eric, let’s see some early apostolic writings of Baptist fathers that taught contrary to the Real Presence….
There was no reason for anyone to teach such. It was understood that Christ was spiritually in US (John 14:20, Matt.18:20). His body and blood were solid and liquid repsectively, so the elements of the Passover Seder were taken to represent that. Such as "REMEMBRANCE" (The scripture's own word) was a very solemn occasion, so to tread lightly on it would be to dishonor Christ's body and blood. Again; it is about christ Himself, IN us, not about inanimate objects.
So. (cont.)
Imagine yourself Bob, for instance, hearing somebody describe the Bible as the "word of God" and concluding that, since John calls Jesus the "Word", then the Bible must be Jesus Christ. Now imagine everybody in the whole Church making the same dumb error of logic. Now imagine no teacher in the whole Church stepping forward to say, "That's not what I mean when I call Scripture the 'word of God.'" That is something like the stupidity alleged of the early church, if they really did confuse a "simple symbol" with the Incarnate God himself.
So the burden of proof is not on the Catholic here, but on you Bob, Eric and others who must show why the whole of the early Church formed the distinct impression that the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ himself.
Regarding Polycarp, as I stated in pervious posts, he was a disciple of John and both Ignatius and Irenaeus where students of Polycarp and both wrote of the Real Presence. I didn’t say that Polycarp wrote such; only that Ignatius and Irenaeus were students of Polycarp.
So who did Ignatius and Irenaeus learn this from? Just b/c Polycarp is silent in letters, doesn’t mean he never preached or taught the Real Presence, for we have 2 of his students that wrote of such.
You're using speculation.
Being taught by one person does not mean that the person taught did not then build upon it, or put things in their own way.
Ignatius only uses a metaphorical form of statement (using a word like "is"), which could at best be ambiguous (either symbolic or real), but does not go into any discussion of some mystical change or transformation. Justin and Irenaeus later in the ceutury are the first to do that. There is no reason to speculate "Oh well, the earlier fathers must have understood that as well". The doctrine was
developing! Just like the Trinity, which was not formulated as the form we know it today until Nicaea and Chalcedon. The Church weighed all of the different expressions of doctrine developing, and when someone crossed a line into something that denied the scriptures (such as Arianism, modalism, adoptionism or Nestorianism), then leaders stepped up to condemn it. (And those heretics were usually taught by someone else in the Church, so that does not prove their teaching was right). But it was not because there was some fully developed "apostolic tradition" passed down orally only, that the doctrine was compared with. You see the different positions gradually developing in their respective schools of thought, and then they would eventually become issues of contention. And even after the council, the debates continued to go on.
So who would challenge "real Presence" with any "Baptist" or "Zwinglian" doctrine? The way it developed, nobody saw any issue with it; but then when the western Catholics go further and turn it into "transubstantiation", then there is a reaction against it, and even you easterns do not really accept it. So obviously; SOMETHING changed SOMEWHERE along the line. This then leads others to question the whole development and try to go back to what Christ and Paul really said.
1900 years of confusion? Show me where the confusion is during the Early Church…You’re losing credibility quickly here Eric…I’m beginning to believe that you’re just a typical Baptist who’s been told what to think and not how to think…
1900 years of confusion:
Ignatius wrote of the Real Presence in 110 AD
Justin Martyr in 151 AD
Irenaeus in 189 AD
Clement of Alexandria in 191 AD
Tertullian in 210 AD
Hippolytus in 217 AD
…and many, many more, uhhh, where’s those Baptist at?
1900 years of confusion…goodness
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I mentioned SEVERAL infamous errors of the Church. The state power and being a worldly kingdom, the biggest one. My point with Real Presence was your ultimate argument was to defend it with the Church's historical errorlessness, but actual history shows that is an absolute fantasy.
Also, did you by chance read Eric B’s comment that there was 1900 years of confusion within the Church concerning the Real Presence? I’m still waiting on the proof of this, along with his statement that the ‘flat earth’ is Catholic dogma…
Made a ‘dogma’ out of it? Please provide your references, the year, the Pope of when this ‘dogma’ was defined and also please list the Pope and the year that this ‘dogma’ was corrected, revised, reversed, cancelled or whatever.
Oh and make sure during your research that you have a clear definition of what ‘Dogma’ is…
Maybe not an "official" dogma, like Real Presence, but they still felt strongly enough about it to condemn and persecute others over it. Yet they were wrong. Yet you claim the Church was errorless, except for "a few corrupt priests or false popes" or whatever.
Here’s where you fail in your logic. First you’re asking the impossible. By the very nature and literal definition of transubstantiation, what changes is the substance or essence, not the qualities, appearances, or accidents of what still appear to our senses to be bread and wine. The change is a supernatural change…get it…s-u-p-e-r-natural, a miracle and a very unique one at that. So there’s no way to verify such a supernatural change scientifically, nor would I personally wish it to be so, even how much I value science as a means of knowledge.
You sound like the atheist I often debate about Christ’s divinity. Your similarly asking to look at a chuck of Jesus’ skin or examining His blood to see how it belongs to both God and Man simultaneously. Both notions require FAITH and are scientifically unverifiable, just as Christ strongly implied to Doubting Thomas after he had to feel the wounds of Christ in order to believe!
Second, I think that there’s been more than enough divine revelation in Scripture, that’s been referenced too in this thread alone to enable even a careful and skeptical exegete, predisposed against it, to accept this miracle, even how difficulty as it is to comprehend.
But then again, aren’t many Christian concepts and events difficult to grasp? How about the Virgin Birth, eternity, the Trinity, the Personhood of the Holy Spirit, the raising of Lazarus, changing water to wine, perfect love, free will vs. grace, efficacious baptism, ect.
I conclude that the Eucharistic miracle is far less difficult to give assent to than many of the above difficulties, which strain the natural mind and require a more or less ‘blind’ leap of faith.
But the problem is, these other "supernatural"
events, (changes in physical matter) you could actually see the change; like the water into wine, parting the Red Sea, raising the dead etc. Then there are spiritual realities such as the doctrines about God (Trinity, grace, inddwelling of the Holy Spirit, etc), in which there is no change in any mater, because it is spiritual. What your doctrine has done is confuse the two types of "supernaturalism", so you get these physical elements that "change", but there is no physical difference in them, so you have to conclude s "spiritual; presence" in them, when God's Spirit is always describesd as indwelling people, not things. It's us who sinned and needed to be regenerated, not bread and wine.
You speak of "literal", but if it is a "spiritual" change, that by nature is contrary to "literal", which would mean that it would actually become fleash and wine that could be observed with the unaided eye, let along scientifically.
What you're doing here with these "intellectual suicide" arguments is using the same tactic the Church used on all these "scientific skeptics" or "unbelievers" when it insisted the world was flat. And when it was ultimately proven it wasn't then the Church looked foolish, and only using mind control (when state control wasn't enough), and the cause of Christ suffered.
The problem with your theory is that it takes the whole passage of John 6 out of the context of the rest of the life and faith of the early Church. Jesus doesn't just say this weird thing. He says other weird things which the disciples don't understand, such as "The Son of man will be crucified and rise from the dead" and "Beware the leaven of the Pharisees." Mark 4:34 tells us that Jesus always explained his figures of speech to his apostles. The only time he doesn't is when he's not using a figure of speech. Significantly, neither in John 6 nor when He predicts His death does He tell His apostles what He "really" means. Instead, He follows up His strange words in John 6 with equally strange words at the Last Supper: "This is my body." His disciples strain to understand both His words about His death and resurrection and His words about the Eucharist.
And you all have never answered the fact that at the last Supper, His actual "flesh and blood" were still there, in His Person. So how could the bread and wine be "literally" His flesh and blood.
