How can it be called orthodox if it is not biblical?

[Dorothea]

To read the body and blood as a remeberance as Luke says, is to reject adding magic and sorcery to the faith as real presencers do.

There's no magic or sorcery involved, just the presence Christ in the chalice by the descending of the Holy Spirit on the chalice with the wine and bread in it. It's a mystery because nobody can explain how this happens because anything God does, nobody can explain. And to reject the belief that the bread and wine do become His Body and Blood is to walk not in His teachings, as I posted. And so, you are separated from the Church (as you are not Orthodox) and believing in this remembrance only which I have seen through many posts here that this belief is not orthodox, but rather a false teaching. What other false teachings does this leave you volunerable to since you have rejected this important one? How can you grasp onto the "correct" teachings when failing to believe already one important one? In doing so and being detached in a way without the guidance of the Church that the Holy Spirit has guided for nearly 2000 years leaves you open to more misleading beliefs put out there by the Enemy.

 

[Dorothea]

I pray that you will turn your non Biblical ways and repent before it is too late!

Thanks for the prayers. I've been praying for you for the past several weeks that God will bring you to the Truth and to His Church.

 

[Dorothea]

I pray that you will turn your non Biblical ways and repent before it is too late!

And btw, our ways are biblical. These past several pages have been all about Biblical passages! What you should mean to say is that you'd wish we'd have the same interpretation as you, but we don't, so we're wrong. We humble ourselves and realize those before learning right from the Apostles had the correct interpretations. Those today who are detached from the Church Fathers and His Church are in the dark to the correct translations and interpretations.

 

[Joshua G.]

I pray that you will turn your non Biblical ways and repent before it is too late!

that's a good prayer for all individuals running the good race. thank you.

 

[Christos Anesti]

I don' think anyone is denying that it's a remembrance or that it is symbolic. It's also the body and blood of Christ. The two are not mutually exclusive as noted in that quote I repeated twice.

Here it is again

On the other hand, however, the Orthodox tradition does use the term "symbols" for the eucharistic gifts. It calls, the service a "mystery" and the sacrifice of the liturgy a "spiritual and bloodless sacrifice." These terms are used by the holy fathers and the liturgy itself.

The Orthodox Church uses such expressions because in Orthodoxy what is real is not opposed to what is symbolical or mystical or spiritual. On the contrary!In the Orthodox view, all of reality -- the world and man himself -- is real to the extent that it is symbolical and mystical, to the extent that reality itself must reveal and manifest God to us. Thus, the eucharist in the Orthodox Church is understood to be the genuine Body and Blood of Christ precisely because bread and wine are the mysteries and symbols of God's true and genuine presence and manifestation to us in Christ. Thus, by eating and drinking the bread and wine which are mystically consecrated by the Holy Spirit, we have genuine communion with God through Christ who is himself "the bread of life" (Jn 6:34, 41).

 

[choirfiend]

In the passage where Christ speaks of eating his flesh and blood, which many followers found to be "a hard saying and walked with Him no more," the word Christ uses to describe eating His flesh is better correlated in English with the word "munch." It's a graphic reference when speaking about eating another person's flesh and blood.

If Christ was just talking about an empty ceremony with each follower doing some sort of contemplative effort to remember the past, why was it so hard for His followers to hear?


You're still not getting a vital point: The Eucharist is an eternal sacrifice. God is outside of time. We participate in His Kingdom, and His sacrifice, but it isn't restricted by time. It's not a re-crucifying, or a remembering of something that happened 2000 years ago. It is God making Himself and His sacrifice present now, eternally. His is in our midst!

 

[Mikeb85]

Ahhhh now comes the straw man. We will make it seem like remeberance is only for dead people as to smear Livindesert as a heretic.

As pointed out remeberance or a remebering a recollection of something an act of recalling to mind. What do we need to call to mind? That is the crucifixtion and ressurection. These events while effecting all of time happened only once. To claim real presance (if you do go by the straw man the posits that rememberance has a funerary referance which it dose not) then you claim the crucifixion must constantly happen every week. To claim this is to claim Jesus's sacrifice in 33 A.D. was not enough. That I cannot agree with.

First of all, I'd suggest you read chapter 6 of the Gospel according to St. John... "Then Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you." And it goes on...

And no, we don't believe the crucifixion happens over again every week... We experience the ressurection every week, since God is outside time and has given us the sacraments in which we experience His grace and indwelling... All this is the true meaning of remembrance.

 

[Thekla]

Ahhhh now comes the straw man. We will make it seem like remeberance is only for dead people as to smear Livindesert as a heretic.

As pointed out remeberance or a remebering a recollection of something an act of recalling to mind. What do we need to call to mind? That is the crucifixtion and ressurection. These events while effecting all of time happened only once. To claim real presance (if you do go by the straw man the posits that rememberance has a funerary referance which it dose not) then you claim the crucifixion must constantly happen every week. To claim this is to claim Jesus's sacrifice in 33 A.D. was not enough. That I cannot agree with.

I don't think this was an attempt to smear you; it explains a way of understanding that is different from yours. If you look at the Greek word, and the associated terms, the funerary reference is clearer.

We do not understand there to be any more than the one crucifixion; as often as we celebrate the Eucharist we become present at the one sacrifice. What Christ did is a 'spiritual reality', it is eternal. So we do not re-sacrifice, but uncover or show or participate in that which is eternal. The resurrection is also eternal; both are for all time.

 

[Livindesert]

I don't think this was an attempt to smear you; it explains a way of understanding that is different from yours. If you look at the Greek word, and the associated terms, the funerary reference is clearer.

We do not understand there to be any more than the one crucifixion; as often as we celebrate the Eucharist we become present at the one sacrifice. What Christ did is a 'spiritual reality', it is eternal. So we do not re-sacrifice, but uncover or show or participate in that which is eternal. The resurrection is also eternal; both are for all time.

I have and see no funerary referance. I see referances to events.

Even if it did Christ died and was ressurected. Without his death he could not have ressurected himself. I know you do not teach that Christ did not die like Muslims teach. So there was a death, a funeral, and a resurrection all to connect us back to God through faith in him.

 

[Macarius]

Ahhhh now comes the straw man.

Well... this particular post was made in response to one of my fellow Orthodox Christians and wasn't presented as an argument against you so much as a meditation on a point she made. So... not a straw man because it isn't an argument.

We will make it seem like remeberance is only for dead people as to smear Livindesert as a heretic.

I was actually attempting to link remembrance to both death (as Christ is in the grave) and Life (as Christ lives). Remembrance, while it doesn't exhaust our view of the Eucharist, certainly does matter.

As pointed out remeberance or a remebering a recollection of something an act of recalling to mind.

One simple question: why can I not call to mind Christ's death and resurrection in the Orthodox view of the Eucharist?

You are the one using the strawman by presenting this whole issue as a false-dichotomy between "remebrance" and "real-presence." Why can't I have both?

What do we need to call to mind? That is the crucifixtion and ressurection. These events while effecting all of time happened only once.

This is a difference between our two communities - there is a tendency for the West, in particular the Protestant churches, to view time in a linear fashion. The East tends to view it more cyclically / ever-presently. Time, for God, is different from time for us. In the New Kingdom (which the worship of the Church participates in) the Sacrifice of Christ which happened once for all is still a reality since God, being timeless, is still sacrificed, and being timeless God is still dead. Far from weakening God, though, this means that God is PRESENT in suffering (even today) and that Christ is PRESENT in death (even today). It isn't just that God died - God entered death, and thereby made Life (since He is Life) present in death - in otherwords, He overcame death.

Christ is also risen since, being timeless, Christ is resurrected (it isn't past tense "Christ has resurrected" it is present tense, "Christ is risen").

So because we mystically participate in the New Kingdom during the worship, the Eucharist can make manifest Christ's sacrifice without re-sacrificing Christ. We, emphatically, do NOT believe the Eucharist to be a re-sacrificing of Christ.

To claim real presance (if you do go by the straw man the posits that rememberance has a funerary referance which it dose not) then you claim the crucifixion must constantly happen every week.

Not necessarily - see above. Because God is still filling death with Life (is still present in death / is still dead), it can have the funerary remembrance AND not. I'm not attached to the funerary aspect of remembrance (that was a meditation on something a prior poster had said) - I just don't think its necessarily inappropriate.

In Christ,
Macarius

 

[Macarius]

Right so I am correct that Luke explains in detail with corinthians that it is a rememberance

And Matt, Mark, and John don't include referance to remembrance.

And remembrance is in no way incompatible with real-presence. We can affirm the real presence of Christ AND still remember Christ in the Eucharist. In fact, both meanings are strongly affirmed by us.

[/quote]I found a before 300 A.D. church father that relates to that idea. Yet you still choose to ignore those facts. Ohhhh well [/quote]

If you're referencing the two scripture passages, remember that my challenge to you was to find a Church Father who agreed with your interpretation of those scripture passages.

Remember that the passages also still say "This is my body... This is my blood" and the word "is" still denotes functunal equivalence. So these passages do NOT support a non-real-presence view - they support viewing the bread and wine as Christ's body and blood, and viewing them this way (partaking of Christ's body and blood), and remembering Christ in them. Nothing in that is inconsistent with Orthodoxy's view.

 

[Macarius]

I agree with you and Clement of Alexandria that said it is the faith that dose the joining the bread and wine and water being symbolic while faith is what matters.

What's the reference (i.e. in which work and passage did Clement write this)? I'd like to look it up.

Thanks in advance,
Macarius

 

[Macarius]

To read the body and blood as a remeberance as Luke says, is to reject adding magic and sorcery to the faith as real presencers do.

You're just repeating the same accusations we've already answered. We don't view it as magic any more than God answering prayer is magic. We have faith that God is faithful to the promises He makes and that He effects those promises by His grace.

 

[mark46]

It seems curious that many protestants consider themselves biblical literalist (yes a heresy in itself). For them, we must take every word as literal truth (even without understanding the original languages or how the early Church interpreted those words and concepts).

And yet, these same folk seem to consider the entire sixth chapter of John symbolic. Surely the Greek is clear, the repetition is clear, the emphasis is clear.

If we do not "chew" the Body of Christ we will not have enternal life! There is no symbolism in this chapter.

And there were thousands listening to this sermon of Jesus. And how did they receive this? Did they think it symbolism? No, of course not. ALL but the apostles left. When the apostles were asked whether they also would go. They said meekly that they had nowhere else to go.

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I have not studied Orthodox doctrine on this issue. I do understand the RCC and some of the Protestant understandings. For the real absence folks, the Lord's Table is a memorial service. "Do this in memory of me" they pray once a month or so. This does the language of scripture a great disservice. At very least we are representing and reliving as we do this in remembrance. In ther RCC view, we are unified in the one sacrifice of the cross, over all the centuries, with all the eucharists of all time past and future. Lutherans, Calvinists and Methodists have different views, but their do understand that Christ is truly present in the bread and wine.
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And yes, it has continued to amaze me that millions can believe that all truth is contained in the Bible canonized centuries after the death of the apostles and with many of it volumes removed a thousand years after the canonization. In the end, the question is one whose authority was the bible canonized, and what did those poor folks do for those hundreds of years before there was a canon. And why oh why should we ignore all father of the church born before 1500?