That's not true. This is an affirmative statement "This IS my body". This IS my body=NOT saying this is NOT my body.
That’s incorrect, and another example of the Appeal to Ignorance fallacy. The phrase “This is my body” is not equivalent in any way to not saying “This is not my body”, because in the latter case, we would have no basis for inferring that the bread was the Body of our Lord.
To put it another way, if I say “The sky is blue,” that is equivalent to me saying “The sky is not cloudy,” however, if I do not say “The sky is not cloudy,” one cannot infer that I mean to say “The sky is blue,” because I am not on record as having made any comment which could be logically contraposed against an inverse. This is the double negative problem I was trying to show you in the previous post.
Like I said. I believe that when Jesus said this is my body, he is referring to the bread he is giving those gathered to eat, as his body. Therefore, he means that the bread represents his real body that will be sacrificed the next day. It's therefore both his bread and his body when I eat sacramentally. To me it's all about venerating his loving sacrifice for me and all of us as a sacred thing when I partake of bread and wine in remembrance of him.
The problem is, that’s not what you said in the previous post. You said this:
This is MY body, therefore means to me that Jesus is literally talking about his real flesh and blood body that will be stripped naked, mocked, scorned, beaten, scourged and nailed to a cross the next day.
This directly contradicts your previous statement, because if our Lord is literally talking about His real flesh and blood body, then that validates the doctrine of the Real Presence. We believe that our Lord
is literally talking about His real flesh and blood body, indeed, when He says “This is my body” and we believe that that is what we partake of in the Holy Eucharist. We believe that He has changed the bread into His body while preserving, for most communicants, the perceptual attributes of bread, so that we can partake of the flesh which He sacrificed for us, and then, in His resurrection, glorified and made immortal and Infinite, so that there is no limit to the extent to which we can feed on Him, without harming Him; the harm was already done, and it is those who partake of the Eucharist unworthily, along with those who reject Christ, who, according to St. Paul, become guilty of the body and blood of our Lord.
Additionally, your statement:
It's therefore both his bread and his body when I eat sacramentally.
Has further muddied the waters, since now you seem to be asserting something like the Lutheran position, in that Lutherans like my dear friend
@MarkRohfrietsch believe that in the Eucharist we partake of His body in, with and under the species of bread. But you expressly rejected a Lutheran position earlier when you said this:
To be clear, I don't engage in cannibalism as described in the OP. As a Sacrament I know the bread and the cup represent his real body and blood as a sacred and precious thing even because Jesus suffered a horrific death on a cross for me and as an offering for all.
This statement, aside from being needlessly offensive insofar as it suggests that Lutherans, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Old Catholics, High Church Anglicans, and members of the Assyrian Church of the East, along with members of several other denominations who believe in the Real Presence, have a sacramental theology which implies cannibalism, is also a statement of Zwinglianism.
The result is, forgive me, a confused and inconsistent approach to sacramental theology on your part, in that you are relying upon logical fallacies combined with terminology used by Lutherans, Orthodox, Catholics, Assyrians and others, along with statements used by Zwinglians and other non-Calvinist members of the 16th century Reformed movement, to articulate your interpretation of sacramental theology, which, while clearly not a belief in the real presence, I can’t tell if you intend a Zwinglian or a Memorialist approach.
It would really help matters if you were to read a description of the Eucharistic theology of the 16th century Reformed Christians such as Calvin, Zwingli, Boucher, Knox, and so on, specifically the different approaches to Reformed theology which emerged across Switzerland (Calvinism in Geneva, Zwinglianism on Zurich on the other side of the country, and other movements in Bern, Basel, and so on), as well as related movements from across the border in France.
You might also, as a cautionary tale of the problems of ambiguous definitions of Eucharistic theology, look into the controversy surrounding the early Anglican Eucharistic theology, specifically that of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, because it is a hotly contested area due to the “Black Rubric” in the 1552 BCP, which was removed in the Elizabethan Prayer Book of 1560 and the initial Stuart BCP of 1600, but reinstated in the 1662 BCP after the restoration of the monarchy (perhaps in a minor concession to the low church elements of the Church of England in the hopes of preventing another civil war from erupting along sectarian lines, as the Roundheads and especially Cromwell had Puritan iconoclast inclinations. Thus we have widespread debate on the subject, with some arguing that the Cranmer had a Lutheran sacramental theology, which seems unlikely, others argue that Cranmer and his followers were Calvinist, which seems more plausible in light of the Black Rubric, others arguing that their approach was Receptionism, which is suggested by the Prayer of Humble Access, while still others such as the Anglican Benedictine monk and liturgiologist Dom Gregory Dix, in his seminal work on liturgical structure and the theology of liturgical organization, The Shape of the Liturgy, made a compelling argument that Cranmer was a Zwinglian and the BCP espoused a strongly Zwinglian sacramental theology (a point hotly debated by others, and indeed, this view proved extremely controversial among Dom Gregory’s contemporaries in the Anglo-Catholic branch of High Church Anglicanism, for many of them, the “Prayer Book Catholics”, were and are strongly attached to the traditional Book of Common Prayer, and did not like the implication that it was inherently Zwinglian; I would argue for my part that it doesn’t matter what Cranmer thought since the BCP ultimately proved ambiguous enough, even with the Black Rubric (which, like the 39 Articles, was rendered somewhat inert through the writings of the Tractarians led by Edward Pusey in the 1840) to accommodate all Eucharistic theologies between Zwinglianism and the Real Presence.
However for my part I don’t think this level of ambiguity is ordinarily desirable; in England it was politically useful in allowing for would-be Catholics and would-be Reformed to coexist within the same broad church, and this was conducive to national unity at the time, but now that our civilization has moved from the Elizabethan idea of a broadly inclusive state church as the bedrock of national unity, to the Classical Liberal idea that freedom of religion is an essential and inalienable right, thus permitting the existence of a multitude of Christian denominations, it becomes an imperative that we are able, in theological discourse, to communicate our Eucharistic theology clearly and unambiguously. In this manner, a scholar of theology such as yourself can associate with like-minded Christians. But I fear you might find that more difficult if you continue to describe your sacramental theology using confusing and contradictory language, and in arguing for it, furthermore employ arguments which are logically unsound.
For my part, I don’t care if you reject the traditional Eucharistic theology of the Lutherans, Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Assyrians, etc, in favor of another approach, since I believe in freedom of religion; I just wish you might refrain from criticizing our approach, especially using logically flawed and contradictory arguments. If you must debate us, please at least do so in a logically coherent and semantically consistent manner.
And please pray for us, as we will for you, for I have no animus towards you personally, but rather desire your friendship and fellowship, and I think I speak for most members present who advocate for the doctrine of the Real Presence when I say that.
