But God is not limited by this pattern or these rules he gave us. We don’t know the story of God and other Christians. He hasn’t really told us. My guess, based on what I know of Him, is that when any Christians gather to follow his command to “Do this in remembrance of me, ” that He is at least as present as they expect Him to be. If they believe that His presence only lasts during the ceremony and they throw away any left over elements, well then I don’t think He is going to be sacramentally present in a way which persists in the elements in the way in which He is after a Catholic Eucharist. But He will come to His people and nourish them at least as much and in the way they expected and asked Him to…and maybe even more so. Not because their faith creates His presence or projects His presence or gives them a feeling of His presence, but because He loves them and wills to come to them.

Is this the same as the Catholic Eucharist? I can’t say yes. For one thing, there is the whole issue of Eucharistic Sacrifice, in which Catholics believe the Church is ever making Christ’s sacrifice present in our world and in the current time. Aside from high church Anglicans I don’t think Protestants believe this or intend their celebrates to mean this.

But again, I think those Catholics who jump from ideas about “validity” to saying that a Protestant eucharist is an empty ritual, are saying something the Church doesn’t require, or even authorize, them to say.

Susan Peterson

I think-I more than think, I know- it is a mistaken idea of Catholic teaching on the eucharist to think that Christ’s cells or DNA are in it.

What something is made of is not what it is. I think the commenter named Anna was trying to get at this in a long comment above.

Substance is the word which was used in scholastic philosophy to translate “ousia”, or being. Thus homoousian was translated as consubstantial.(one in being, of one being) When we speak of Christ being consubstantial with the Father, you would never be thinking of cells or DNA in that context, I am sure.

Substance is is being, what something really is. Catholics think that the substance of bread, what bread really is, is changed into the substance of Christ, while the appearances of the bread remain. Appearances include cells, DNA etc. If there is any DNA in the eucharistic bread it is the DNA of wheat cells! So what is it that bread “really is,” apart from what it is made up of? It is the “that for the sake of which” of something which is the most important cause and meaning of its being, I think, so that to the degree that one could describe the form,eidos, or true being of bread, it would be “that which is made to feed the bodies of human beings.” To understand transubstantiation, you have to get into the way of thinking that what is most real about something is not its physical makeup. So while every cell and molecule of the bread remain exactly the same, the real being of the bread becomes the real being of Christ’s body. He is really, truly, substantially present, NOT physically present in the way that modern science understands physical presence. If people say physically present, it is either that they are trying to say that Christ’s body is present, or that they misunderstand “substantially.”

Now, what does it mean that Christ is really present, the whole Christ, therefore including his body, when there is no molecule present which was once present in Galilee? Well, what is the real or substantial presence of Christ? Not an easy question to come up with an easy answer for. But, first of all, in parallel to the real being of bread, which is to feed the body, the real being of the eucharistic body is to feed the soul. And then I think you could add to that everything which Christ’s body means to Christians: that which hung on the cross for us, that which died and was ressurected…that which was formed in the womb of a virgin, that which united our human nature and divinity. (I may be speaking a bit loosely in the last phrase.)

So please, if nothing else, discard forever the thought of cells and DNA from Galilee in the year 33 (or whatever year they are saying now that it really was.) Catholic teaching is that Christ is really (substantially) present..and that the reality or substance of bread has gone and does not remain, but the accidents of bread, which includes its chemical composition, the stuff it is made out of, does remain. The best way we have found to try to explain this is using some ideas from Scholastic Aristotelianism about substance and accidents, but that explanation is not the doctrine.

Susan Peterson

I wrote this for you, relating to the “cells/DNA” thing.

As for the burden of proof: you’re right that there are many places where Jesus says “I am something” in a metaphorical way. And it is, generally, clear that Jesus is being metaphorical; there is never any evidence of people taking his words in a literal way. And that is the difference between the other passages and John 6.

It starts off in the same metaphorical way, in verse 35, “I am the bread of life”. In verse 41-42, it becomes clear that the Jews understand “bread” metaphorically, but they do complain on other grounds. In verse 48, Jesus repeats his metaphorical-sounding claim. It’s in verse 51 that Jesus suddenly throws the curve-ball by saying that the bread is his flesh. This is different from saying “I am the bread of life”. “Flesh”, in particular, has a much more literal sound to it. Which is why the Jews started complaining about the *literal* understanding in verse 52. (Unlike their previous objection).

None of the other “I am the light/vine/gate” passages go beyond the initial metaphorical understandings. Only in John 6 do we have the adding-on of something more literal sounding, followed by the Jews complaining about the literal meaning of his words, followed by Jesus re-affirming in even stronger language (vs 53 & 55 especially) the literalness of his message. (As opposed to him telling them they were misunderstanding him).

I say this because I believe it. But I am saddened that you have been upset over uncharitableness on Catholic issues. Please let me know if anything I say irks you.

God bless,
Anna

You know brother, here in the states we have this thing called “burden of proof.” That is, whose job it is to prove an assertion. Now since I have a Bible and four Gospels full of Jesus saying “I am the good shepherd” and “I am your rock” and “I am the door” and so on, it’s not my job to demonstrate Jesus might have been speaking “words of eternal life” rather than a literal description of chewing his DNA. So in this instance, with all due respect, the burden of proof is on you, without recourse to your tradition, to demonstrate that in the real world the Eucharist served in your church has even one single quality of the DNA, cells and body tissue of a Mediterranean Jewish man, and that there is a transformation from Bread to real human body taking place under the words of a priest.

Ferde, I am not going to debate this with you. You are welcome to believe whatever you want about the real presence. I’d just appreciate it if you would let Christ be real and present for the rest of us as well.

peace,

MS

Please note where the comas are;
I did not say “…exist, or present Himself…” but “… Jesus does not in the present exist or present Himself within the bounds of (or limitations of) time and space, as a human, He nevertheless, as He was at creation, is present as Deity”.
I was simply trying to say that Jesus in the present does not limit Himself to time and space as he did at his incarnation. Otherwise, how could he in one breath say “..I go away…I will come again” and in another “…lo, I am with you always…”

What is your evidence that the words of John 6 are not meant to be taken literally?? You talk about ‘verified scientifically’ being necessary in relation to the Eucharist. What is your liguistically verifiable evidence that John 6 is comprised of figures of speech? Or whatever you think it’s comprised of?

Let me answer your question this way. All of us read scripture with an understanding of the meaning of language, and whether we admit it or not, this is fairly vital to how the meaningfulness of scripture is experienced. This is very important, and in my opinion, very much of the essence of what it means to be human, since language is vital in so many ways to our identity and understanding.

When someone asks you to abandon your own concepts of meaningful language and try on another set of possible meanings, it’s a major shift. In my case, the language of John 6 is no longer meaningful if it becomes literal. No matter how many Lutheran or Roman friends want me to consider that the physical cells, DNA, etc of Jesus are what is meant, my own understanding of language simply doesn’t go there. If it did, I’d really be cut loose from the moorings of meaningful sentences in all of Scripture and I’d become dependent on something that, to me, is the equivalent of gnostic approaches to language.

peace

MS