Eric B said:
Again, what you're doing is using "intellectual suicide" arguments like the Church always used on "scientific skeptics" or "unbelievers" when it insisted on docteines such as the world being flat. Again, these other "supernatural" events, (changes in physical matter) you could actually see the change; like the Creation, Virgin Birth, raising the dead, and all the other miracles. Then there are spiritual realities such as the doctrines about God (Trinity, grace, indwelling of the Holy Spirit, etc), in which there is no change in any matter, 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 some "spiritual; presence" in them, (and have to conclude that as "another one of those reason-defying 'supernatural' events" even though it is neither physical nor match any other spiritual event).
So which category of "supernaturalism" would the INCARNATION fall into? The latter? For
empirically Jesus of Nazareth was a man. However, we believe that He is from eternity GOD, and then became man at a specific point in time. In becoming man, he didn't assume
a man who had a separate subsistence in his own right, but He--the Divine
PERSON--assumed humanity and made it HIS OWN. Yet, looking at the historical human Jesus of Nazareth (ie if we were to somehow put Him under a microscope) we wouldn't be able to tell that He's any different from any other human being. So while empirically Jesus certainly is a human, the truth is more complex than that--He is the eternal Divine Logos who assumed real humanity in becoming the man Jesus in history without ceasing to be God. This is a profound spiritual truth yet it supernaturally entails an intimate incomprehensible involvement of the Divine with His material creation--physical flesh and blood, etc--without empirically changing the nature of the matter involved (except perhaps at the Resurrection).
Somewhat similarly with the Eucharist, the bread and wine are
empirically...well...bread and wine. Not counting stories of possible Eucharistic miracles, if one were to look at the consecreted bread and wine under a microscope one would see...bread and wine. However, there is no
a priori reason to suppose that the bread and wine couldn't possibly have another
spiritual reality
in addition to the
empirical one--namely the true participation in the body and blood of Christ by the believer. Of course, the difference in the Incarnation is that it happened once in history and was the Divine Person of the Son of God taking on real empiric humanity (while also remaining Himself divine), while in the Eucharist Christ takes empirical bread and wine and spiritually (not simply 'symbolically') makes it His body and blood (while remaining empirical bread and wine). The point is, the Incarnation itself shows us there is no hard and fast distinction between one 'supernaturalism' which involves 'spiritual' truth and another 'supernaturalism' which involves only matter, since the material miracle of the Virgin conception and birth brought God Himself into intimate connection with matter without causing Himself empirically detected within the matter He assumed.
Looking at the miracles of the feeding of the 5000 and the changing of the water-into-wine, we can admit that these aren't
strictly analogous to presence of Christ's body and blood in the bread and wine of Communion since there is no empirical change detected in the bread or the wine. However, these miracles are helpful to illustrate the power of the One, who is from eternity God but is time empirically man, to communicate (indeed "multiply") Himself to us in the forms of the empirical bread and wine should He so choose. Jesus as God-become-man is certainly able to so involve Himself with the elements of bread and wine that they become in a
spiritual (but not empty 'symbolic') way His very Body and Blood, just as He so identifies the bread and wine in the Gospel narratives. Which brings me to the next point...
God's Spirit is always described as indwelling people, not things.
Hmmm...let's see:
“The cloud covered the Tabernacle of meeting and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tabernacle of meeting because the cloud rested above it and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.” (Exodus 40:34-35)
(The Tabernacle is a physcial "thing", is it not?)
And regarding Solomon's Temple:
"And it came to pass, when the priests came out of the holy place, that the
cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not continue ministering because of the
cloud; for the
glory of the LORD filled the house of the LORD. Then Solomon spoke: 'The LORD said
He would dwell in the dark cloud. I have surely built You and exalted house, and
a place for You to dwell forever.'" (1 Kings 8:10-13)
So, we have a clear Biblical statements that God fills physical inanimate objects such as tabernacles and temples, and that He is actually said to
dwell in objects such as clouds and temples. This seems to be the straightforward reading of these passages, unless one asserts despite such realistic language that:
(1)There is no
real connection between the cloud and the glory of the Lord
(2)That there is no
special presence involved in God's shekinah glory filling the tabernacle or temple.
(3)That the "cloud" is simply a non-physical metaphor for God's glory (despite the fact that this non-physcial entity would somehow physically preclude Mose and the priests from entering the tabernacle and the temple respectively.)
So if one concedes that, yes, God can (and did) have a
special presence in specific locales (temples/tabernacles) by dwelling in physical non-human objects (clouds) while remaining omnipresent, there is no logical reason that Christ cannot in a sense do likewise with other physcial non-human objects (bread/wine)--unless one wants to beg the question.
It's us who sinned and needed to be regenerated, not food.
Unless I've missed something, I don't see where anyone has claimed that God "regenerates" food. :laugh:
However, I don't believe anyone has demonstrated (
without special pleading) that God
cannot use physical objects (even "food") to convey spiritual benefits, given the fact that it's
all HIS creation--physical matter
and spirit--and He can do what He wants to with it. The fact is that God has already brought spiritual benefits through the use of physical means by bringing spiritual (and, at the Eschaton,
physical) salvation to mankind through the physical Incarnation, physical Death (on a physical cross with physical nails, shedding physical blood), and physical Resurrection of His Son. Lest, one think that after Christ's Ascension that God now only deals with us spiritually, we need to remember that ultimately we're going to continue to be physical-spiritual entities (with real physically resurrected bodies like Christ's) and not become a bunch of disembodied spirits (which would be the hope and dream of gnostics). That being the case, there is no
a priori reason that Christ can't spiritually convey the benefits of His physcial/spiritual Atonement through the physical means of bread, wine, and water to His people.
So once some
a priori philosophical/theological objections are dealt with as above, one can then turn to the texts themselves and see if grammatically and in context the Scripture writers do in fact teach a real connection/identification between the bread and wine with the actual body and blood of Christ--with the former not being empty metaphors, but truly making present the thing signified. I believe the case has been well made by many people for this real connection through out the posts on this thread.
