Is the Eucharist cannibalism?

[MarkRohfrietsch]

My theology doesn’t come from any pastor or any commentator. My theology comes from my own personal studies. Now I’ve given an in depth explanation of why I believe what I believe in post 270 if you care to read it.

So, you know better than the Church catholic? Good to know. Sounds like personal gnosticism.

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

My theology doesn’t come from any pastor or any commentator. My theology comes from my own personal studies.

That message is typed as if personal studies are meritorious. As if one's own efforts are superior to the efforts of the saints over the past two thousand years. I do not share that point of view; rather, I am inclined to think that personal studies are likely inferior to the combined scholarship of Christians over the past two thousand years.

 

[BNR32FAN]

As in self-taught? I am mostly self-taught too, and I see the weakness of that approach all the time. Mostly not knowing what I don't yet know. In my older age I carefully seek out the wisdom of others. Sandstone sharpens sandstone. Lead sharpens lead. Iron sharpens iron. Some day I may be in that latter category. For now I seek what I can understand from good teachers, testing them against each other, putting my own opinions way down the credibility list.

Yes I can see that and here we are having this discussion because Ignatius said so. Well I require more evidence than such person said so. Blindly accepting what commentators or pastors preach leads nowhere because there are pastors, preachers, commentators, and seminaries, that teach every theology under the sun. And just because Ignatius was an early church figure doesn’t mean that he never made a mistake or that his theology was flawless. There were all sorts of heresies floating around the early church. Doetism, adoptionism, arianism, pollinism, monarchisnism, Nestorianism, I mean the list goes on and on. All of these heresies came from early church bishops and priests. So it’s not entirely inconceivable that Ignatius could’ve had a 99% orthodox theology and been wrong on a thing or two which is why I don’t blindly follow along with what people teach.

 

[BNR32FAN]

If you've researched what the early church taught, then you know it wasn't just St. Ignatius who wrote about a literal understanding of the Eucharist. So why act like the teaching hinges on the first person whose letter referring to it happened to survive from antiquity?

I never said Ignatius was the only person to teach the real presence in the Eucharist I said he was the first. And just because more people jumped on the bandwagon doesn’t prove that what he said was correct because not long afterwards you had Docetism becoming widely accepted in the church by numerous priests & bishops and not long after that Arianism overtook half of the entire church.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

My theology doesn’t come from any pastor or any commentator. My theology comes from my own personal studies. Now I’ve given an in depth explanation of why I believe what I believe in post 270 if you care to read it.

We are all philosophers and theologians. And quite often we think we are coming up with our own unique ideas. But there is a very good chance that anything we come up with has been thought before. Not only thought but analyzed, critiqued, debated and then forgotten by most. This is why familiarity with history of philosophy and theology can be very helpful.

Post 270, you say. I will read it.

 

[BNR32FAN]

I know it's a typo, but I still want to point this out because it's hilarious to me, as a former Oregonian.

Yeah thanks for pointing that out. Lol my stupid spell check kicked in and “corrected” it for me, I’m on iPhone so it automatically corrects words when you hit the space bar. It gets frustrating sometimes because sometimes it corrects words that are actually spelled correctly and changes them to a completely different word. Like I might type mom and hit space and it might change it to Monday or something else. You’d think that if you typed a word that actually exists in the dictionary that it wouldn’t change it to something else if the word is spelled correctly.

 

[dzheremi]

Yes I can see that and here we are having this discussion because Ignatius said so. Well I require more evidence than such person said so. Blindly accepting what commentators or pastors preach leads nowhere because there are pastors, preachers, commentators, and seminaries, that teach every theology under the sun. And just because Ignatius was an early church figure doesn’t mean that he never made a mistake or that his theology was flawless. There were all sorts of heresies floating around the early church. Doetism, adoptionism, arianism, pollinism, monarchisnism, Nestorianism, I mean the list goes on and on. All of these heresies came from early church bishops and priests. So it’s not entirely inconceivable that Ignatius could’ve had a 99% orthodox theology and been wrong on a thing or two which is why I don’t blindly follow along with what people teach.

So because other people have gotten things wrong in the past that somehow makes it less likely that you are getting things wrong right now? That makes no sense.

You completely contradict yourself when you refer to those various beliefs as 'heresies', too. On what basis do you determine that without listening to the Church, especially since you've chosen several beliefs that are new enough to not even be hinted at anywhere in the scriptures (e.g., Nestorianism)? So you must be following some variation of "because such and such said so" to be not coincidentally coming to the same conclusion as they do on these beliefs, as again several of them are too late to be directly addressed by the scriptures, and hence require at least some level of outside support in refuting or condemning them.

As usual with individualist "me and muh bible" types, when it comes to a belief that you just don't agree with historical Christianity about, "I do my own research/I require more than 'so-and-so said so'", whereas when it comes to things that you agree with historical Christianity about, it is taken as a given that these are the stances that every Christian will have, as though (e.g.) HH St. Athanasius the Apostolic did not stand against the world in resisting the Arians, and suffer nearly 20 years of exile under various anti-Nicene emperors and their Arian gremlins sitting illegally on the bishop's chair. Why not at least give credit where credit is due?

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

None of the other New Testament authors make any mention of the Eucharist being His body and His blood. The next person we have saying anything about His body and His blood in the Eucharist is Ignatius in 107AD.

Actually Corinthians

I Corinthians 10:16 The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?

I Corinthians 11 . 29 For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.

But think it comes down to what we think about "substance". There is conceptual, intangible substance as well as physical tangible substance.

 

[BNR32FAN]

I know it's a typo, but I still want to point this out because it's hilarious to me, as a former Oregonian.



Not true, because you'd still have to contend with the fact that it is affirmed to be literal in the liturgical texts of every ancient Church. It's not like St. Ignatius was the only one in antiquity who held the view; it was the view of every particular Church that affirmed Nicene Christianity up until very recently.

For example, even the Nestorians (who are important in this discussion precisely because of their official autonomy from wider Christianity following the declaration at the Synod of Dadisho in 424, meaning that after that point they would have no real reason to have to conform themselves to whatever any other Church thought or believed) affirm this in their Anaphora of Mar Addai and Mar Mari when their celebrant proclaims: "The body of Christ and his precious blood are on the holy altar. In awe and love let us all draw near to him. And with the angels let us cry aloud unto him, Holy, holy, holy Lord God."

This East Syrian anaphora is hypothesized to date back to the 2nd or 3rd century (its manuscript tradition is much later, as is the case with many anaphoras), so it is possibly not much older than St. Ignatius himself. Similarly, the core of the Anaphora of St. Basil (the liturgy used during ordinary time in the Coptic Orthodox Church) is said to date back to the life of St. Basil himself (4th century), and likewise contains very explicit proclamations that the holy gifts upon the altar are the body and blood of our Savior. And so it was in each particular Church for many centuries, and still is today in most of them. Memorialism is a later invention, and definitely a minority in terms of the number of major churches that subscribe to it versus those that do not.

Ok everyone seems to ignoring the reason why I believe it’s metaphorical. Why is nobody addressing my point about John 4? I know Ignatius wasn’t the only person to believe it, Nestorian wasn’t the only person who believed that Christ had two distinct natures. Is that evidence that he was correct? So arguing the point that other people in the early church held that same belief doesn’t qualify as a reasonable argument. Half of the entire church believed in Arianism, is that evidence that they were correct? I provided specific scriptural evidence and reasoning to support my argument and nobody seems to want to discuss it. Point out the errors in my explanation of the passages I quoted. Please.

 

[jas3]

I never said Ignatius was the only person to teach the real presence in the Eucharist I said he was the first.

You said, and continue to say (so I will quote your most recent statement):

here we are having this discussion because Ignatius said so. Well I require more evidence than such person said so.

...and yet we could throw out all of the letters of Ignatius and have a much more explicit and complete explanation of the doctrine in St. Justin Martyr's writings just a few decades later.

And just because more people jumped on the bandwagon doesn’t prove that what he said was correct because not long afterwards you had Docetism becoming widely accepted in the church by numerous priests & bishops and not long after that Arianism overtook half of the entire church.

You also had writings from the Church Fathers condemning those heresies, as well as entire councils condemning them (both of the ones you mentioned were condemned at Nicaea I). So, I'll ask again, hoping against hope for a straight answer: where is the condemnation of the literalist view?

 

[BNR32FAN]

Considering these doctrines are central not only to the Eastern Orthodox Church but also to the Oriental Orthodox Church (I collectively regard the EO and OO churches as being optimal), and the Assyrian Church of the East, and the Roman Catholic Church, and Lutheranism, and High Church Anglicanism, this really doesn’t make much sense, since one would expect that if the Orthodox were in error on either point, one of the other churches I have enumerated would have objected.

Beyond that, I would note that we know that the doctrine of the real presence predates St. Ignatius because the Divine Liturgy of St. Mark, that is to say, the Alexandrian Rite divine liturgy, which has the oldest attestation, in the form of the Strasbourg Papyrus, of any liturgy aside from the liturgical instructions in the Didache, which fall short of being a complete liturgy, makes it extremely clear, moreso than the ancient liturgy of Antioch as attested to by the Anaphora of the Apostles still used by the Ethiopian Tewahedo Orthodox Church and also found in St. Hippolytus, and used (incompetently, I would note) as the basis for Eucharistic Prayer 2 in the Novus Ordo Missae and Eucharistic Prayer B in the 1979 BCP, and in the services of several other denominations who published service books since 1969. And what is more, Antioch and Alexandria were known for their rival catechetical schools with different approaches to hermeneutics. Thus it is extremely unlikely that the doctrine of the Real Presence would be adopted by Alexandria just based on a statement by St. Ignatius of Antioch, who has become an extremely revered saint, but the process by which he was glorified took a while even then.

What is more, the Didache makes clear the doctrine of the real presence, and so to does scripture; contrary to what Adventists assert there is nothing in scripture which is contrary to the doctrine of the real presence; the most one could possibly get away from it would be to say that our Lord is really spiritually present but not really physically present in the Eucharist, so that spiritually, the bread and wine became his body and blood, and I had thought this was the Calvinist view although recently i have realized this might not be the case, which would force me to disclaim my previous view that Calvinism, while in error, was not directly contradicted by scripture, and that rather the reasons for not adhering to it were due to the rejection of several of its central doctrines by the early church.

The thing is, we have no record of anyone in antiquity arguing that our Lord was only spiritually present in the Eucharist. Rather, early Eucharistic heresies tended to be more bizarre, for example, the Collyridians offered the Eucharistic sacrifice to the Blessed Virgin Mary who they worshipped, and they may have believed, like the modern day Palmarian cult, that she was present in the Eucharist. Then there were the hydroparastae, who believed in having the Eucharist with water only, which makes no sense, so naturally the Mormons decided to adopt that doctrine, since it seems to be a fundamental principle that nothing in Mormonism can be logical or rational.

I have a couple questions about the liturgy of Mark. If I’m reading this right it appears that it was discovered in 1928 and is dated back to the 4th century. As I was reading thru it I noticed that in step 12 the priest is to recite the Nicene Creed. This doesn’t seem to predate Ignatius’ epistle to the Smyrnaeans. Is there something I’m not understanding correctly?

 

[BNR32FAN]

You said, and continue to say (so I will quote your most recent statement):

...and yet we could throw out all of the letters of Ignatius and have a much more explicit and complete explanation of the doctrine in St. Justin Martyr's writings just a few decades later.

You also had writings from the Church Fathers condemning those heresies, as well as entire councils condemning them (both of the ones you mentioned were condemned at Nicaea I). So, I'll ask again, hoping against hope for a straight answer: where is the condemnation of the literalist view?

Ok so your argument is that because it was never argued against then it must be true. In answer to your question I don’t know of any such argument from within the apostolic church. But I have another question. Was Origen’s theology orthodox before the 5th ecumenical council in 553 or were they just as incorrect the day he wrote them? Origen’s theology wasn’t officially confirmed as being heretical until 300 years after he wrote it. So would you say that a 5th century bishop could rightly use the same argument you’re using here to determine the validity of his theology?

 

[The Liturgist]

I have a couple questions about the liturgy of Mark. If I’m reading this right it appears that it was discovered in 1928 and is dated back to the 4th century. As I was reading thru it I noticed that in step 12 the priest is to recite the Nicene Creed. This doesn’t seem to predate Ignatius’ epistle to the Smyrnaeans. Is there something I’m not understanding correctly?

Yes. The Divine Liturgy of St. Mark/St. Cyril, has been in continuous use since at least the second century, but what you are looking at is a recent recension of it, since even in the fourth century the Nicene Creed had not been added to the Divine liturgy.

This liturgy was not discovered in 1928, rather, that is when a second century papyrus (some online articles incorrectly say fourth century) containing a fragment of it was found. Manuscripts of it before the creed was recited as part of the liturgy, for example, the version in the fourth century Euchologion of St. Serapion of Thmuis (which is the oldest complete, that is to say, fully intact, Christian liturgical book in existence, although we have earlier fragments such as the aforementioned papyrus, as well as earlier quotes from euchologia such as the Anaphora of the Apostolic Tradition) do not have the Nicene Creed, but nonetheless are quite clear about the Real Presence.

 

[BNR32FAN]

Your presumption implies that everything that Jesus says is a "metaphor". It is all about context..

That’s not any kind of an explanation, it’s just a false accusation. I literally explained exactly why I believe it was metaphorical and nobody wants to discuss my explanation. If there’s a flaw in my explanation I would like to hear it. I could understand if I simply claimed that it’s a metaphor without any explanation. What is the difference between the example Jesus gave in John 4 to the Samaritan woman and the example He gave in John 6? Why is John 4 considered to be metaphorical and John 6 is considered to be literal when they’re the same message using different metaphors?

 

[The Liturgist]

Ok so your argument is that because it was never argued against then it must be true. In answer to your question I don’t know of any such argument from within the apostolic church. But I have another question. Was Origen’s theology orthodox before the 5th ecumenical council in 553 or were they just as incorrect the day he wrote them? Origen’s theology wasn’t officially confirmed as being heretical until 300 years after he wrote it. So would you say that a 5th century bishop could rightly use the same argument you’re using here to determine the validity of his theology?

Origen was regarded as a heretic by many Christians prior to the Three Chapters of Justinian (which actually anathematized him), for instance, two prominent critics of Origen from the fourth century are St. Jerome, who translated the Vulgate, and St. Epiphanius the bishop of Salamis, who dedicated a large chapter of his encyclopedia of heresies, the Panarion, to Origen and Origenism, since there was a sect which was heretical which claimed to follow Origen.

Indeed many fourth century Christians blamed the problem of Arianism on Origen, which I regard as unfair; I don’t think Origen intended to teach that doctrine, and Origen has also historically always had defenders and people who feel that he should not have been anathematized, and also the Cappadocians regarded some of his writings as valuable and compiled them into an anthology, the Philocalia (not to be confused with the 18th century Philokalia with a K, compiled by St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite and St. Macarius of Corinth, which is an Eastern Orthodox anthology of texts pertaining to prayer, mystical theology, monasticism and Hesychasm, the goal of which was to aid monks interested in the pursuit of Hesychasm). The same is also true of Theodosius of Mopsuestia, who was anathematized at the same time; he is venerated as a saint by the Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East (and probably by the Chaldean Catholics and Syro Malabar Catholics, since lately they have been liberated from close Roman control of their theology), and indeed his anathema caused a 30 year schism in Spain, the Three Chapters Controversy.

 

[The Liturgist]

What is the difference between the example Jesus gave in John 4 to the Samaritan woman and the example He gave in John 6?

John 6 directly aligns with the Institution Narratives in the Synoptic Gospels and 1 Corinthians.

Speaking of the latter, the greatest flaw with the Memorialist argument is exposed in 1 Corinthians, in that if the Eucharist is merely a memorial, why would partaking of it unworthily and/or failing to discern the body and blood of our Lord result in physical and spiritual harm, as St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:27-34

 

[BNR32FAN]

John 6 directly aligns with the Institution Narratives in the Synoptic Gospels and 1 Corinthians.

Speaking of the latter, the greatest flaw with the Memorialist argument is exposed in 1 Corinthians, in that if the Eucharist is merely a memorial, why would partaking of it unworthily and/or failing to discern the body and blood of our Lord result in physical and spiritual harm, as St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:27-34

No that’s not the reason why I believe it’s metaphorical. Post 270 is my explanation for why I believe it is metaphorical.

 

[The Liturgist]

No that’s not the reason why I believe it’s metaphorical. Post 270 is my explanation for why I believe it is metaphorical.

I didn’t say it was the reason why you believed it was metaphorical!

I was saying that rather, the answer to your question as to what makes John 6 different from John 4 is that it corresponds to the Institution Narratives in Matthew, Mark, Luke and 1 Corinthians 11; then, on a related note, 1 Corinthians 11:27-34 is extremely inconsistent with the memorialist soteriology, for the reasons I stated. That is what my post was saying.

 

[BNR32FAN]

Origen was regarded as a heretic by many Christians prior to the Three Chapters of Justinian (which actually anathematized him), for instance, two prominent critics of Origen from the fourth century are St. Jerome, who translated the Vulgate, and St. Epiphanius the bishop of Salamis, who dedicated a large chapter of his encyclopedia of heresies, the Panarion, to Origen and Origenism, since there was a sect which was heretical which claimed to follow Origen.

Someone could make the same argument from the other side because there were also a lot of people who were in support of it and even to this day some within the apostolic churches actually believe in universal reconciliation based on his interpretations of the scriptures because that was never actually anathematized at the 5th ecumenical council.

 

[BNR32FAN]

I didn’t say it was the reason why you believed it was metaphorical!

I was saying that rather, the answer to your question as to what makes John 6 different from John 4 is that it corresponds to the Institution Narratives in Matthew, Mark, Luke and 1 Corinthians 11; then, on a related note, 1 Corinthians 11:27-34 is extremely inconsistent with the memorialist soteriology, for the reasons I stated. That is what my post was saying.

The reason the Eucharist at the Last Supper that corresponds to John 6 is because He was making a reference to what He had already previously said to them. I’ve never said that the Eucharist was a memorial. Even if it were a memorial I still don’t see why desecrating it couldn’t result in adverse consequences. But I do appreciate you addressing my explanation.