Hello, Hedrick!
I’m now going to depart from trying to explain Luther and Calvin, and talk about my understanding of the words of institution. I’m not so bothered whether they agree with the early Church, since I think the early Church tended to misunderstand the context of much of Jesus’ teaching.
The Communion ritual was a central one for the early Christians. It seems that they should have the right understanding of it, at least for the first 200 years or so. If we can't trust them to be reliably passing down Jesus' teachings, this creates a problem.
You see, the gospel books were supposedly written down in AD 60-110 AD. In the last chapter of John, the editors add in that Jesus did not say that he would return before John's death, even those there was a rumor that Jesus had said this. In other words, there was a dispute, and in AD 80-110, the editors concluded that Jesus had not predicted His own return before AD 140 or so. If we cannot trust the early Christian community's understanding of Jesus' teaching, that creates a problem, because it opens the possibility that they got it wrong 70 years later or so when they finalized or edited the Biblical books.
This kind of distrust of the Christian community's accuracy about Jesus seems to be part of many of the more "skeptical" Protestant theologians' revisionism about both the gospel accounts and the relationship of Paul's teachings to Jesus', a kind of revisionism that can lead away from Biblical Christianity.
I’ve looked at a number of commentaries. The most interesting is the commentary of Matthew in the Anchor Bible. The author gives several arguments why “this is my body” can’t be literal:
* In the reference to Christ’s blood, the “is” is associated with the cup. (Actually it says the cup is the covenant.)
The passage says:
27And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you;
28for
this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.
He is claiming, I think that the cup, not the drink, is the blood or covenant. But I think that he is making too much of this. If I give you a cup with imported Indian tea and say in the form of ordinary speech: "
Drink from this, because this is the tea of the Spice Trade", I am saying neither that the hard cup is the tea, nor that the Cup is the Spice Trade. It should be obvious that I am referring to the liquid inside the cup.
* At least in Matthew (and the explanation says to the other forms), “this” is neuter. That is likely to refer to the whole process of breaking, taking, and eating.
In Russian, it is required to use the phrase "This is -" in the neuter to introduce an object that does not take the neuter, as in "This[neuter] is a woman[female]".
Spanish does not have neuter, but it uses the default (masculine) gender for "This" when introducing a word in either gender: "
Esto es una mujer" (This [masculine] is a woman.)
How does Greek grammar to work when introducing something like blood? Could it disregard the gender of what is being introduced (eg. This [neuter] is my blood)?
I think so, and that "This is my blood, take [it - the liquid] and drink [it the liquid]" would naturally refer to what it was that Jesus was physically handing them at that moment.
He gives two additional arguments, but I don’t think they’re so clear.
Thanks for recognizing that!
All the commentators note that “is” is used in all the Gospels both literally and for “signifies.” I looked at a bunch of commentaries, since I checked the three synoptics in three commentary series. The ones who say something all believe the words are obviously non-literal, and the others imply it.
Don't you think, Hedrick, that the commentary's viewpoint would depend on what the commentor himself believed on that score? Would you expect a Reformed commentator to tell you that these words are meant literally to signify the blood?
"Kretzmann's Popular Commentary" says on Matthew 26:26:
Then, after breaking it, He gave it to His disciples and said: "Take, eat; this is My body." The words of command are plain. From His hand they should take and then eat what He gave them. But it was not mere bread which He gave them; for in referring to the pieces which He distributed, He uses the neuter demonstrative, while bread in the Greek is masculine. Here is a clear reference to the sacramental presence of the body of Christ in, with, and under the bread. This is brought out still more strongly in the parallel passages, especially 1 Cor. 11, 24. In the same way, after the supper proper was ended, when the cup of thanksgiving was about to be passed. He took the cup, returned thanks, thus blessing it and its contents, and gave it to them, letting it go around in the circle with the express command that they all should drink of it. ...
"We Christians confess and believe that the Sacrament of the Altar is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, under the bread and wine, for us Christians to eat and to drink, instituted by Christ Himself. All explanations of the sects, Reformed as well as Papist, as though the bread merely represents the body, and the wine the blood of Christ, or that bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ, come to naught in view of the clear text of Scriptures. Reason, indeed, must yield here; it cannot understand how Jesus at that time, while standing in visible form before His disciples, could give them His body, His blood to eat and to drink, nor how the exalted Christ, though in heaven, yet is present everywhere on earth with His body and blood, wherever this meal is celebrated according to His institution. But the word of Christ is clear and true, and we also know from Scriptures that the body of Christ, the vessel of His deity, had a higher, suprasensual form of being, even in the days of His humility, in addition to His limited form of existence, John 3, 13, also that the exalted Christ now is not locked up in heaven, but as God and man fills all things also according to His body, Eph. 1, 23. Thus we take our reason captive under the obedience of Scripture and do not brood over it, but rather thank God for the great blessing of this His Sacrament.
How do we decide whether to understand words literally or as metaphor? Generally we understand metaphor when a literal reading would be absurd. E.g. Jesus saying he was the door for the sheep. That seems obviously to be the case here.
Jesus said in John 10:9: "I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved,"
There was no physical door at hand, therefore an allegorical meaning is the only conceivable one.
Were there a physical door and he pointed to it and said that he chose to be in it, then this would be conceivable, as he passed through doors later in John 20.
That Jesus could be in some physical object can be the actual meaning even if it
sounds absurd to some because as the Epistles state, Jesus is present in believers, filling them like vessels with his spirit.
Seeming absurdity can be an insufficient basis to interpret Christian theology, because as Paul says: "we preach Christ crucified[, which is] unto the Greeks foolishness". (1 Cor 23)
One argument that has been given is that John 6:60 implies that the disciples thought Jesus was saying something hard. They wouldn’t have thought that of a metaphor. However most interpreters currently believe that 60 - 71 refer to 35- 50. The problem is that if they refer to 51-58, then 63 becomes very difficult. Indeed Zwingli thought 63 was a clincher against the real presence. He was probably wrong because 63 probably doesn’t refer to 51 - 58 at all.
What makes you say that most interpreters believe that? Can you spell this out in more detail, because what you are saying confuses me.
Verses 59-61 say:
59 These things said he in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum.
60 Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it?
61 When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them, Doth this offend you?
I presume that in verse 60 they are complaining about the teachings in the preceding verses. And in those passages, the Jews complain that he calls himself the bread of life and that he says that he came from heaven:
41 The Jews then murmured at him, because he said, I am the bread which came down from heaven.
42 And they said, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? how is it then that he saith, I came down from heaven?
52 The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat?
In verses 62- 63, Jesus says: "What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before? It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life."
The Protestant Jamieson commentary explains:
"Much of His discourse was about "flesh"; but flesh as such, mere flesh".
That is, flesh apart from the spirit is not profitable. Of course, Jesus does not mean that his flesh does not give reward to people, as his death in flesh gave a profit.
"The flesh" in principle does not profit, but Jesus had just told the Jews to eat
His flesh in particular. This can be explained because His flesh is in a spirit form. This is the mystical meaning that Kretzmann's Commentary explains about this verse:
When they would see Him ascending up into heaven, whence He came down, they would either be scandalized all the more, or they would have to be convinced. They would then also understand what He meant when He said that they must eat His flesh. For then His weak human nature would be forever imbued and united with the divine, with the heavenly manner of being. His flesh would then be spiritualized, His body glorified. That would be a visible proof of the fact that He came down from heaven. Knowing this in advance, they should remember that the spirit is life-giving, that the flesh has no value. All material, earthly things that are associated with the sinful derivation of man have no value for spiritual life.
While I think it’s unquestionable that “this is my body” is metaphorical, I do believe that Christ is really present in communion. In the same way that he is present wherever two or three are gathered. But I accept the Reformed concept that communion was instituted specifically as a way to make this presence visible, and as a vehicle to help believers experience it. So when we offer the bread to someone it is appropriate to say “Christ’s body,” because the sacrament really does help bring Christ to them. But this is probably more a statement of Christian experience than the original intention of Jesus’ words. Whether you call this “real presence” isn’t so critical to me, though I think the term would fit if it hadn’t been used in other ways.
With only about 30% of the world's Christians accepting the Reformed view that the bread lacks Christ's real, direct, bodily presence, then with no definite statement in scripture or early writings to confirm it, it is hard for Christians to say that this view is theologically "unquestionable".
You conclude:
It’s cleat that the discussion with rakovsky is going on circles, so I don’t see much point to continuing it. I would be interested if any informed Lutherans wanted to comment.
OK. Let's recap to avoid going in circles.
Lutherans and Catholics take Christ's words when giving the bread - "This is my body" - at face value, seeing the bread as Christ's body in spiritual or physical form. T
he Reformed see the bread as only metaphorically (not "truly") his body, objecting that Christ's actual body is up in heaven, so it can't be present in the bread. I theorized with four or five alternatives that Jesus could be in both places in some form. Who knows, perhaps if He fills His spirit into the bread like He fills His spirit into believers, then the bread can be said to contain Jesus' spiritual presence and be Christ's "body" in some sense?
Second, the Evangelical Credo House claims that many disciples left Jesus because they didn't realize that he didn't mean "eat my body" in the plain sense of the word. Jesus let them go without explaining the symbolic meaning to them. This is an example of leaving Christianity because of this issue.
One thing that we did not discuss much yet was how in 1 Corinthians 11, Paul demands that Christians discern the body in the bread, warning that failing to do so could bring judgment. If this was only a symbolic body, there would be no challenge in discerning it, just as a Christian does not have much trouble discerning an obvious, simple symbol in another religion, when that religion teaches its simple meaning. Besides, it is hard to see how failing to discern the symbol would bring judgment, because failure to have faith would mean that there was no real interaction with Christ's body. Yet an unbeliever's real, unworthy interaction with Christ's body, say, through its real presence in bread that was eaten, could more conceivably bring judgment in the Lutheran scheme than an interaction where an unfaithful unbeliever doesn't commune with Christ's body in heaven and doesn't perceive the symbolism in the Reformed scheme.
Let's look at this more. The verses say:
For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.
When ye come together, therefore, into one place, this is not to eat the Lord's Supper.
For in eating every one taketh before other his own supper; and one is hungry, and another is drunken.
...
But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup.
For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body.
For this cause many are weak and sickly among you and many sleep.
According to the Reformed, the meal only becomes mystical or supernatural when the believer has faith and is brought by it up to heaven. If the communicant has no faith and the ritual is inneffective, then under the Reformed scheme, how could partaking unworthily of something that is itself only a symbol and fails to operate as a vehicle for the believer be a desecration that lead to sickness?
It is also notable that in verse 19 above, when Paul introduces the topic of communion, he does so by saying that there are heresies among them. It sounds like he is talking about a heresy wherein Christians think that the Communion meal is just an ordinary meal. Obviously, they would understand that there is at least some symbolism involved, but their problem appears to go deeper in failing to see that there is a more mystical meaning. As Paul says later in the passage, they do not "discern" the body, which Jesus said was in the bread.
According to the Lutheran book
Christian Dogmatics:
There certainly are children of God among the Reformed who still preach Christ’s satisfactio vicaria Since, however, they lack the right understanding of, and therefore faith in, the words of institution, they are not in condition to use the Lord’s Supper to their benefit. Paul expressly disqualified all who do not believe the Real Presence, since they do not discern the Lord’s body (διακρίνειν τὸ σῶμα τοῦ Κυρίου), 1 Cor. 11:29. With their denial of the Real Presence they also lose the finis cuius of the Lord’s Supper, namely, that Christ’s body and blood is given us in the Sacrament for the remission of our sins. (F. Pieper, Concordia Publishing, 1953, pp. 383–384)
The Lutheran (Missouri Synod) book
Admission to the Lord's Supper says:
The primary question is one of reference: to what does “the body” (to; sw'ma) refer in 1 Cor. 11:29? In the first place, “the body” in this passage refers to the body of Christ that is truly and sacramentally present and is being received orally by all who were communing in Corinth. The following four factors support this traditional conclusion.
- First, the only other use of “the body” in the immediate context refers to Christ’s sacramental presence: “This is my body..."...
- Second, while the overt sin in Corinth involved a breakdown of congregational fellowship and sin on the horizontal plane, Paul was not content to deal merely on that level. Rather, the reason why (gavr, 11:23) he refused to praise them (11:22) flows from the realities that are the Supper of the Lord. Their real and primary problem was this: because they were eating and drinking the Supper in an unworthy manner, they were guilty of sinning against the body and the blood of the Lord. The structure of Paul’s thought demands the conclusion
that at the most important level their failure to “discern” involved the Eucharist itself.
...
Over against the groups whose confession denied the real presence in the Sacrament (the so-called “Sacramentarians”), the Formula of Concord quotes Luther approvingly as follows:
Shortly before his death, in his last confession, he [Luther] repeated...: “I reckon them all as belonging together (that is, as Sacramentarians and enthusiasts), for that is what they are who will not believe that the Lord’s bread in the Supper is his true, natural body, which the godless or Judas receive orally as well as St. Peter and all the saints. Whoever, I say, will not believe this, will please let me alone and expect no fellowship from me. This is final.”
According to the Lutheran Tract "Discerning the Body":
Some [Corinthians] did not understand the Lord's Supper and its purpose or, while knowing the purpose, abused the Supper. This is brought out by several verses: 1 Corinthians 11:19-21 "No doubt there have to be differences (heresies) among you to show which of you have God's approval. When you come together, it is not the Lord's Supper you eat, for as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry, another gets drunk." ...[H]ad the Corinthians used the Supper for a means of grace, and took seriously the Real Presence of the body and blood of Jesus Christ they would have never treated their fellow members in such a shameful manner. They can satisfy their hunger and thirst at home (v.33). Such activities have no place in the Lord's Supper which has other purposes.
People also discern the signs of the sky: Matthew 16:2, "He replied, 'When evening comes, you say, 'It will be fair weather, for the sky is red,' and in the morning, 'Today it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast.' You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times." This last reference is a good parallel to 1 Corinthians 11:29 as "DIAKRINO" is used in a sense to see something that is not obvious to the uninformed person. To the uninformed person all they see is a red sky, but to the informed they see more, what kind of day it will be. Likewise in the Supper there is more than meets the eye. There is more than simply bread and wine, the body and blood of Christ are present as we have been told in the Words of Institution. This understanding is reinforced in 1 Corinthians 10:15,16 where Paul uses the verb "KRINO" in connection with the Real Presence of the body and blood of Jesus Christ in the Lord's Supper. In 1 Corinthians 10:15 Paul says, "I speak to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say. Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?" Paul is asking people to judge, to discern, that there is more than bread and wine in the Lord's Supper. Though this is not evident to the eyes, it is evident by the Words of Institution which are accepted in faith.
Furthermore, "DIAKRINO" does not appear to be the appropriate verb to use if "SOMA" refers to the Church. If by "CHURCH", "PEOPLE" are meant, a word study on "DIAKRINO" shows that this is something that we are not to do in the Church i.e., to fellow believers. Some examples: Acts 15:9 "He made no distinction between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith."; 1 Corinthians 4:7 "For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?" James 2:4 "Have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?" The point is that we are not to discern, the body of Christ i.e., the Church. We are not to make distinctions and show discrimination among fellow believers. But this is precisely what Paul speaks against in verses 17-22 as Paul mentions the sin of despising and humiliating the Church. However, in v. 29 Paul says the opposite of this: He criticizes the Corinthians because they should be discerning the body, and they are not. This leads us to conclude, then, that Paul is not using the word "SOMA" refer to the Church, fellow believers. (http://old.messiahseattle.org/about/pastor/DiscerningTheBody.htm)
So just as in Matthew 16:2-3, wherein a person must look at the signs in the physical sky to see inside what the weather holds, the person must look at the bread and discern within that bread before them the deeper mysteries, Jesus' body. (This is the mystical meaning of 1 Corinthians 10-11.
I can even imagine in the red sky of Matthew 16:2-3 an allusion to the red Eucharistic wine, as I notice that it uses the same word "discern":
He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern (diakrinein ) the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?
