(moved) Can the Philosophical Approach of "Reformed" Protestantism lead out of Christianity?

[rakovsky]

I don't think you made a clear connecting between materialism and the tendency for Calvin to deny the presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Hello, Wordkeeper!

If there is no problem under the laws of physics with a body being in two places at once or having a vast number of pieces of itself be separated from itself over vast distinctions, then how is it "incredible" to make such claims?

Yet in the quotations I gave in my Third Question I linked to, eg. from the Institutes, that was exactly Calvin's stated objection to the Lutheran idea of the Eucharist having Christ's body - that it was "absurd" and "incredible" for Christ's body to be scattered or in two places.

But if there is no materialistic conflict, then such an idea is not absurd anymore than it would be about something immaterial, like a concept could be scattered through millions of peoples' minds.

The Lutherans had said that Christ could be omnipresent or go through walls (Jn 20) or be in the Eucharist bread, and considered Calvin to be subordinating Christ's body to the "ordinary laws of nature", as Calvin notes in his Institutes:

These men [Lutherans] teach that he is in every place, but without form. They say that it is unfair to subject a glorious body to the ordinary laws of nature. But this answer draws along with it the delirious dream of Servetus[burned by Swiss Reformed], which all pious minds justly abhor...

Calvin believed in determinism, but I'm not sure he linked it to materialism. His determinism may actually have attributed election on spiritual intervention from God, making from the same lump vessels for noble as well as ignoble use, whilst a pure materialist would attribute ignoble use to ignoble clay.

Yes. However it is essentially materialistic as Kenneth Keathley explained, since in its scheme God's tool is matter and the believers in effect lack free will.

Calvin chose a metaphorical approach not because of a materialistic world view but because it supported a held doctrine.

The reason that he found this to be the "held doctrine" was because he found the longstanding Lutheran/Catholic view "absurd". And what was absurd about it? He found it absurd that Jesus' body could bilocate. However, this "absurdity" only exists in a materialist scheme, not an immaterial, supernatural one where a spirit body can bilocate (eg. be in more than one believer at once) or where five loaves can be multiplied into a massive number.

People form theories based on general impressions and then try to find additional support for it to firm up that theory.

A security expert would form a theory that terrorist groups would plan their actions according to a pattern. He would be able to recognise that pattern no matter how it was disguised. That is the basis of the data mining techniques used to search electronic chatter for indications of terrorist attacks. An algorithm is created to search for patterns that so indicate those attacks. If a thread of conversation starts off with a group of ladies planning to bake a cake, gathering the ingredients and then finally deciding excitedly that the preparations were ready and it was time to get together and bake the cake, there are enough differences between a real gathering of baking enthusiasts and a disguised group to indicate which is which.

In our study, who is the initiator of the communication? God.

Who are his audience? His sheep.

Who are his sheep? Those who feel they are sojourners in this world. Aliens.

What does he do for these individuals who believe they must grow out from the stage they are born into? He gives them to Christ.

How will they recognise Christ? Because he speaks with the same voice as the Father and God's sheep recognise the voice of the Father.

Since Paul is of the Father, he already knows what God's will is. That is why he can recognise that Isaac and Ishmael are metaphors of grace and law. The incidents recorded in Scripture is God's communication to His sheep about Christ. Paul is not a passive recipient of revelation, he actively LOOKS for revelation.

Sure, I don't see anything there conflicting with Luther's idea of Jesus' body being in the bread in spirit form.

Calvin similarly recognises the motifs of food and drink as metaphors for spiritual sustenance from God. That's why in Calvin's theology, celebration of the Eucharist is always to be accompanied by preaching. Christ is present in the Eucharist in the same way He is present in the sermon.

http://www.midamerica.edu/uploads/files/pdf/journal/10-beach.pdf

This is like modern day allegoricists seeing Jesus as only metaphorically communing with believers, or demoniacs only metaphorically having demons.
They recognize the motifs of demons as metaphors for mental illness.
They see Christ's spirit being present in or communing with believers in the same way that Christ is in the Sermon.

I find that the real reason why they feel this way is not because the Bible says that Christ is only metaphorically communing with believers, but because in the modern, materialistic/"scientific" mindset such things feel, as Calvin said about the ancient beliefs on Christ's body, "absurd".

Calvin’s Theology of Christ’s Presence in Preaching When we come to John Calvin and his doctrine of preaching, we discover that he, like Luther, articulated an extremely high theology of the preaching of the Word. Calvin also gives us a doctrine of Christ’s real presen ce in gospel proclamation. His doctrine, however, has features and accents all its own— corresponding in many respects to his distinct doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. Like Luther, Calvin had a doctrine of the real or true pres ence of Christ in the sacrament.

Eating the flesh of Christ is not merely believing in Him, as Hedrick claims, or even remembering the eponymous act of picking up the cross and offering of Himself as the sin offering. It is the remembering of the teaching, bringing his words back to mind, of which the instruction to eat his flesh was but the first lesson, those who were not offended being those who were blessed.

Question 1: What would you consistently and metaphorically interpret "my flesh" to mean in the following passage:

51I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. 52The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? 53Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.​

Does "my flesh" mean Jesus' flesh in which he died, does it mean Jesus himself and not his flesh in particular, or does his "flesh" just mean his teachings?

Question 2: In John 6, Jesus says not only eat (phagon), but also chew (trogon) his flesh, and the only other place John's gospel uses "chew" (trogon) is John 13, where it says Judas "chews" his" bread" at the last supper.
Is that just a coincidence, or does "chew" intentionally mean the same thing in both places?

 

[Wordkeeper]

Well that's the problem with analysis on an atomistic level. You must examine the idea based on the whole of Scripture, analyse it holistically. Is Christ consistently teaching about eating the Eucharist in which he is physically present, or does he consistently teach about not being offended at the material he presents, as parable, as metaphor, as literal. The message is not to take offense quickly, but pause, reflect, chew, put it in your pipe and smoke it...

Again, the Kingdom of God is like a ...

If you respected a professor highly, would you stomp out of his class if he said something offensive, but was meant to stimulate your thinking?

So when Christ talks about eating his flesh, I compare it with words he spoke about the importance of letting his WORD abide in us, let it permeate our entire being, as its rich, multivalent themes influence all the areas of our lives.

So, no. There is no reason to take those verses literally, since I would have to take the caution to let his words abide in me literally as well, and how does one do THAT?

Hello, Wordkeeper!

If there is no problem under the laws of physics with a body being in two places at once or having a vast number of pieces of itself be separated from itself over vast distinctions, then how is it "incredible" to make such claims?

Yet in the quotations I gave in my Third Question I linked to, eg. from the Institutes, that was exactly Calvin's stated objection to the Lutheran idea of the Eucharist having Christ's body - that it was "absurd" and "incredible" for Christ's body to be scattered or in two places.

But if there is no materialistic conflict, then such an idea is not absurd anymore than it would be about something immaterial, like a concept could be scattered through millions of peoples' minds.

The Lutherans had said that Christ could be omnipresent or go through walls (Jn 20) or be in the Eucharist bread, and considered Calvin to be subordinating Christ's body to the "ordinary laws of nature", as Calvin notes in his Institutes:



Yes. However it is essentially materialistic as Kenneth Keathley explained, since in its scheme God's tool is matter and the believers in effect lack free will.


The reason that he found this to be the "held doctrine" was because he found the longstanding Lutheran/Catholic view "absurd". And what was absurd about it? He found it absurd that Jesus' body could bilocate. However, this "absurdity" only exists in a materialist scheme, not an immaterial, supernatural one where a spirit body can bilocate (eg. be in more than one believer at once) or where five loaves can be multiplied into a massive number.



Sure, I don't see anything there conflicting with Luther's idea of Jesus' body being in the bread in spirit form.


This is like modern day allegoricists seeing Jesus as only metaphorically communing with believers, or demoniacs only metaphorically having demons.
They recognize the motifs of demons as metaphors for mental illness.
They see Christ's spirit being present in or communing with believers in the same way that Christ is in the Sermon.

I find that the real reason why they feel this way is not because the Bible says that Christ is only metaphorically communing with believers, but because in the modern, materialistic/"scientific" mindset such things feel, as Calvin said about the ancient beliefs on Christ's body, "absurd".



Question 1: What would you consistently and metaphorically interpret "my flesh" to mean in the following passage:
51I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. 52The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? 53Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.

Does "my flesh" mean Jesus' flesh in which he died, does it mean Jesus himself and not his flesh in particular, or does his "flesh" just mean his teachings?

Question 2: In John 6, Jesus says not only eat (phagon), but also chew (trogon) his flesh, and the only other place John's gospel uses "chew" (trogon) is John 13, where it says Judas "chews" his" bread" at the last supper.
Is that just a coincidence, or does "chew" intentionally mean the same thing in both places?

 

[rakovsky]

Well that's the problem with analysis on an atomistic level. You must examine the idea based on the whole of Scripture, analyse it holistically.

Hello, Wordkeeper!

There are "anti-missionary" Jews who say that Judaism does not teach that rams' sacrifice atoned for people, because that would be like the Christian idea about sacrifice. I ask them: What about the rams killed on Yom Kippur? What else atoned for the Jews on that day?
Their answer was that I am looking at it at the atomistical level and need to analyze it holistically. They say it was not the rams' sacrifice, but the "whole day" that atoned. Does this answer sound very persuasive to you?

I think that if someone wants to read poetry or literature, a reading that mixes up opposing meanings for the poem's subjects is not consistent and is undermined. If someone hears the story of the Magic Schoolbus and says that this was a real bus that flew around in the air, but that once the story talks about the bus having an accident that it was just a metaphor, then I think that this is not a consistent reading of the story.
If the story is that (A) Jesus came down from heaven and (B) gave "his flesh" for the world, and (C) we must eat "his flesh", then to say (A and B) are literal, but that flesh is only a metaphor in (C) is not consistent and sounds like the rabbis' answer against Atonement. And it begs the question: What is the consistent meaning of the concept of flesh in B and C?

Is Christ consistently teaching about eating the Eucharist in which he is physically present, or does he consistently teach about not being offended at the material he presents, as parable, as metaphor, as literal. The message is not to take offense quickly, but pause, reflect, chew, put it in your pipe and smoke it...

Again, the Kingdom of God is like a ...

The kingdom of God is "like a mustard seed".
Here he is speaking abstractly, as there was no specific mustard seed indicated.
Had he said "the kingdom of God is in this mustard seed that came down from heaven like the manna did", pointing to a specific seed, it would be a different story.

If you respected a professor highly, would you stomp out of his class if he said something offensive, but was meant to stimulate your thinking?

What if he said that "all religions including Christianity begin as cults for mentally weak and delusioned people" and repeated this idea 10 X without explaining it in any way that would be compatible with the foundations of your belief system?
Eating human flesh and drinking any blood is an extreme prohibition in Judaism.

So when Christ talks about eating his flesh, I compare it with words he spoke about the importance of letting his WORD abide in us, let it permeate our entire being, as its rich, multivalent themes influence all the areas of our lives.

So, no. There is no reason to take those verses literally, since I would have to take the caution to let his words abide in me literally as well, and how does one do THAT?

You are referring to John's gospel:

6. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned.
7. "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.​

John 4 also says: "No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us."

Words, like the mustard seed in the expression above, are concepts. Granted, words really are etched in the mind physically in the same way that they are etched in a computer's hard drive.

However, Christ and God and Christ's flesh are not just concepts, but real things.
It's one thing for a concept to metaphorically abide in a person, and another for God and Christ, real spirits, to abide in people. Do you agree or would you say that the Holy Spirit and Christ's spirit do not actually abide in people, even though the Spirit abided in the ancient Temple as the Shekinah, or flames were seen/envisioned over the apostles' heads at Pentecost?


I think the real reason Reformed don't accept the idea of Christ being in the bread is because it sounds like the Magic school bus or like the story where Paul handed out his aprons and handkerchiefs to sick people who got healed (Acts 19), which some Reformed don't accept. As Calvin said, Christ's spirit being in bread is "incredible". When it comes to the practical work of applying metaphors consistently in a given teaching that sounds like the Lutheran view, they avoid doing so by saying like the rabbis "it's the whole day" or "just read it holistically".

And yet... ... and yet .... Christians commonly think Jesus passed through a door, even though all it says was Jesus appeared when the doors were closed (Jn 20). The issue then becomes using these Reformed standards of "credible" vs. "incredible" to "holistically" judge miracle stories and teachings.

If a modern skeptic tells me that the resurrection is a metaphor because otherwise it's "incredible", and that I have to read it holistically without figuring out each passage and verse and not to rely on Church Tradition for authority, then I am a bit stuck. I have had this happen. How can I respond to them?

 

[hedrick]

Calvin believed in determinism, but I'm not sure he linked it to materialism. His determinism may actually have attributed election on spiritual intervention from God, making from the same lump vessels for noble as well as ignoble use, whilst a pure materialist would attribute ignoble use to ignoble clay.

Calvin believed in determinism in a sense, but probably not the way the word is currently used. Using the term determinism tends to lead to a view of predestination that I’d call mechanical. God saves people because he determines all events. But Calvin is following Augustine here. Predestination occurs through God electing people and changing their hearts, not through having the world act as some kind of clockwork mechanism with God as a clockmaker. Even general providence isn’t best thought of as mechanical. God arranges for all things to work out to the benefit of his people. Perhaps determinism is a consequence, but (1) it’s not clear that God specifically determines insignificant events (though of course he knows what will happen), and (2) if there is determinism it’s a result of God’s personal involvement, not in the sense of fully determined Newtonian physics.

 

[rakovsky]

Hello, Hedrick.

Calvin believed in determinism in a sense, but probably not the way the word is currently used. Using the term determinism tends to lead to a view of predestination that I’d call mechanical. God saves people because he determines all events.

I agree, that this is "mechanical", and indeed Kenneth Keathley of Southeastern Baptist Seminary said the same thing.

But Calvin is following Augustine here.

I heard that one way that Calvin differs from Augustine in that Calvin saw God as actively willing the reprobation of sinners, as Calvin writes:
Institutes III.xxii.11:

At last, he[Paul] concludes that God has mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth (Rom. 9:18). You see how he refers both to the mere pleasure of God. Therefore, if we cannot assign any reason for his bestowing mercy on his people, but just that it so pleases him, neither can we have any reason for his reprobating others but his will.

It's true that God hardened Pharaoh's heart and here Paul talks about God hardening people. But does God not have any other reason for reprobating people than that he just wants to?

Kenneth Keathley noted the same thing in his book:

In supralapsarianism God's decision to elect and to reprobate is primary. .... In this paradigm God does not reject the reprobate because he is a sinner; it is the other way around. ... Calviin made this clear when he declared that 'the highest cause' of reprobation is not sin but 'the bare and simple pleasure of God.'

Catholics and Lutherans follow Augustine enough that I am inclined to think that Calvin went further than Augustine in determinism.

God saves people because he determines all events. Predestination occurs through God electing people and changing their hearts, not through having the world act as some kind of clockwork mechanism with God as a clockmaker. Even general providence isn’t best thought of as mechanical. God arranges for all things to work out to the benefit of his people.

However, if God unconditionally determines all events, selects only certain people, imposes irresistible grace on them, while the rest due to his "bare and simple pleasure" he reprobates, then it appears rather like clockwork, doesn't it?

Perhaps determinism is a consequence, but (1) it’s not clear that God specifically determines insignificant events (though of course he knows what will happen), and (2) if there is determinism it’s a result of God’s personal involvement, not in the sense of fully determined Newtonian physics.

As to the part in bold if we take Calvin in a strong sense and don't let up for Arminian-style free will, then yes, determinism appears a consequence of the postulates above.
As to the rest, there is a debate that Keathley noted, namely whether God is personally and directly involved in every act of salvation and reprobation (Edward's view), or if he uses secondary causes to achieve these goals like Newtonian physics. In the case of (1), then God is directly stimulating sinful actions, and in the case of (2), we have materialism. This is why Keathley writes:

If he does so directly, then God is the sole cause of all events and secondary causation is an illusion This position, called occasionalism, was embraced by [Reformed leader] Edwards... [In occasionalism] it appears that the characters are causing the actions, but this is an illusion occurring only in the observer's mind... but few Calvinists followed [Edwards on this].

So if God is not the primary cause then He must use secondary means. But what secondary means are available? The only candidate left is a metaphysical determinism that operates through physical events. And this option puts the theological determinist in the same boat with the materialists. It is not really surprising when materialists advoate determinism. ... Many materialists consider the notion of free will to be a 'useful fiction'.

Personally, I find the whole Calvinist paradigm very rigid and deterministic in contrast to my expectations and instincts, although I have a sense that there is partial truth in it. In one sense, God created the world and foreknew what would happen, and he does intervene in the world. But in another sense, since I believe in Free Will, I believe that individuals have their own independent will and that God reacts to them and loves everyone in the world and chooses all people to belong to Him, and then they have the independent willpower to resist God or not. I am aware that my thinking with its emphasis on free will and power to resist God's grace would be a break with Calvinism. However, since I have a strong idea that people must have their own free will and have a strong perception of God's reactions to it, then it is hard for me to be a strict determinist.

The main way I would see to absolve Calvin of determinism would be if he did not mean things as intensely, absolutely and deterministically as he made them sound in his writing on this topic.

Calvin writes: “When God prefers some to others, choosing some and passing others by, the difference does not depend on human dignity or indignity. It is therefore wrong to say that the reprobate are worthy of eternal destruction.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, pp.120-121) For me, this sounds a bit psychotic to say that people are getting eternally damned by the all-merciful God when they aren't worthy of it.

I don't want to focus so much in this thread on Calvin's negative side, but just on his determinism and materialism. But I suppose if one has an extreme idea of determinism, the end result is what Calvin just said, that the reprobate are not essentially damned because of their own badness as chosen by their own independent free will.

Here again he writes:

“If what I teach is true, that those who perish are destined to death by the eternal good pleasure of God though the reason does not appear, then they are not found but made worthy of destruction.”(Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.121)

This is the "eternal good pleasure of God", and they are "made" worthy of destruction?

These kinds of sayings suggest to me that Calvin really is extreme in his determinism. If a person had independent free will, then God should be finding them good or bad, rather than only making them that way. Maybe to feel more comfortable I should just focus on how in Calvin's system each thing is predetermined, (and thus materialistic), rather than focusing on these ideas of damnation for people whom I am taught to love by Jesus and who have real souls, and are by Calvin allegedly made to be worthy of it.

The above paragraph also seems to get into the supralapsarian (Calvin) vs. infralapsarian (Spurgeon) debates among Reformed, over whether God's election and the reprobation preceded or succeeded the Creation and Fall, and whether this ultimately has a difference as debated here:

The contention is whether or not there is any real difference between Supra-lapsarianism vs. Infra-lapsarianism, or whether the purported distinction is merely a false dichotomy, where a system of jargon is invented for the sole purpose of Special Pleading. In other words, the charge is essentially whether any Calvinism inevitably boils down to the hyper Calvinism of Supra-lapsarianism.
http://examiningcalvinism.blogspot.com/2008/11/supralapsarianism-whats-that.html

 

[Wordkeeper]

Hello, Wordkeeper!


There are "anti-missionary" Jews who say that Judaism does not teach that rams' sacrifice atoned for people, because that would be like the Christian idea about sacrifice. I ask them: What about the rams killed on Yom Kippur? What else atoned for the Jews on that day?

Their answer was that I am looking at it at the atomistical level and need to analyze it holistically. They say it was not the rams' sacrifice, but the "whole day" that atoned. Does this answer sound very persuasive to you?

It doesn't because it is not the same.


My argument is that your sample size is too small. If you look at scripture in totality, you will see that being faithful to jesus is a motif appearing several times:

John 6:57As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me.

John 15:7"If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

Matthew 21:22"And all things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive."

Eternal life is to live like Jesus: the wind and the waves submit to him, even demons obey him.

Luke 10:17The seventy-two returned with joy and said, "Lord, even
the demons submit to us in your name."


When the seventy two were sent, the Eucharist wasn't even instituted.

Your comparison of my argument to the argument from Jewish debators is specious. Not the same, so irrelevant, not worth replying to.

I think that if someone wants to read poetry or literature, a reading that mixes up opposing meanings for the poem's subjects is not consistent and is undermined. If someone hears the story of the Magic Schoolbus and says that this was a real bus that flew around in the air, but that once the story talks about the bus having an accident that it was just a metaphor, then I think that this is not a consistent reading of the story.

My bus is consistent in never having crashed, so irrelevant.

If the story is that (A) Jesus came down from heaven and (B) gave "his flesh" for the world, and (C) we must eat "his flesh", then to say (A and B) are literal, but that flesh is only a metaphor in (C) is not consistent and sounds like the rabbis' answer against Atonement. And it begs the question: What is the consistent meaning of the concept of flesh in B and C?

Preaching.

The kingdom of God is "like a mustard seed".

Here he is speaking abstractly, as there was no specific mustard seed indicated.

Had he said "the kingdom of God is in this mustard seed that came down from heaven like the manna did", pointing to a specific seed, it would be a different story.

The kingdom of God is living like Jesus did. He said if he drove out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God had indeed arrived amongst men.

What if he said that "all religions including Christianity begin as cults for mentally weak and delusioned people" and repeated this idea 10 X without explaining it in any way that would be compatible with the foundations of your belief system?

He said those who believed his preaching10x would have the life He had plus times and explained it 10x plus times, so where did he drop the ball? What Jesus did with the Eucharist was to provide a graphic example of the Way, so that even simple folk could understand. All his disciple have to do is to REPEAT his teachings, so that those who accepted them would live the life He lived.

Eating human flesh and drinking any blood is an extreme prohibition in Judaism.

Which should set the listeners mind thinking. Surely he must have meant something else, since he was sinless, having come not to abolish the law but to uphold it...

You are referring to John's gospel:

6. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned.

7. "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.


John 4 also says: "No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us."


Words, like the mustard seed in the expression above, are concepts. Granted, words really are etched in the mind physically in the same way that they are etched in a computer's hard drive.


However, Christ and God and Christ's flesh are not just concepts, but real things.

It's one thing for a concept to metaphorically abide in a person, and another for God and Christ, real spirits, to abide in people. Do you agree or would you say that the Holy Spirit and Christ's spirit do not actually abide in people, even though the Spirit abided in the ancient Temple as the Shekinah, or flames were seen/envisioned over the apostles' heads at Pentecost?

Why should I say that when Scripture says the opposite?

Acts 6:5They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; also Philip, Procorus,Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism.

I think the real reason Reformed don't accept the idea of Christ being in the bread is because it sounds like the Magic school bus or like the story where Paul handed out his aprons and handkerchiefs to sick people who got healed (Acts 19), which some Reformed don't accept. As Calvin said, Christ's spirit being in bread is "incredible". When it comes to the practical work of applying metaphors consistently in a given teaching that sounds like the Lutheran view, they avoid doing so by saying like the rabbis "it's the whole day" or "just read it holistically".

Or they don't take single verse and form an entire doctrine on it without seeing if similar verses describing similar cause and effect appear in the totality/other places of Scripture.

And yet... ... and yet .... Christians commonly think Jesus passed through a door, even though all it says was Jesus appeared when the doors were closed (Jn 20). The issue then becomes using these Reformed standards of "credible" vs. "incredible" to "holistically" judge miracle stories and teachings.

Jesus passing through the door is credible because he entered houses whose doors were locked. No instance of believers, eating his actual flesh, OTOH, was ever recorded.

If a modern skeptic tells me that the resurrection is a metaphor because otherwise it's "incredible", and that I have to read it holistically without figuring out each passage and verse and not to rely on Church Tradition for authority, then I am a bit stuck. I have had this happen. How can I respond to them?

Specious . The resurrection was witnessed. Incredulity was expressed by Calvin because no incident of believers living the life Jesus lived by eating his literal flesh is recorded. However, incidents of those who believed his preaching and living the life He lived abound.

 

[Wordkeeper]

Hedrick wrote:

Calvin believed in determinism in a sense, but probably not the way the word is currently used. Using the term determinism tends to lead to a view of predestination that I’d call mechanical. God saves people because he determines all events. But Calvin is following Augustine here. Predestination occurs through God electing people and changing their hearts, not through having the world act as some kind of clockwork mechanism with God as a clockmaker. Even general providence isn’t best thought of as mechanical. God arranges for all things to work out to the benefit of his people. Perhaps determinism is a consequence, but (1) it’s not clear that God specifically determines insignificant events (though of course he knows what will happen), and (2) if there is determinism it’s a result of God’s personal involvement, not in the sense of fully determined Newtonian physics.

Quote
Materialism, also called physicalism, in philosophy, the view that all facts (including facts about the human mind and will and the course of human history) are causally dependent upon physical processes, or even reducible to them.

The word materialism has been used in modern times to refer to a family ofmetaphysical theories (i.e., theories of the nature of reality) that can best be defined by saying that a theory tends to be called materialist if it is felt sufficiently to resemble a paradigmatic theory that will here be called mechanicalmaterialism. This article covers the various types of materialism and the ways by which they are distinguished and traces the history of materialism from the Greeks and Romans to modern forms of materialism.

http://googleweblight.com/?lite_url...522154&sig=ALL1Aj46lYiF2RAud_tobYYry_TNcZSAcg


Basically, materialists believe that acts that people normally attribute to free will are caused by the actions of the entirety of the universe. Even a butterfly flapping its wings contributes in some way to the acts. Obviously, this is not what Calvin believed. He believed everyone started out unrighteous, from a common lump of clay, it was God who intervened, making some for honorable use, others for ignoble.


It's really better to view God as gardener who trains plants. Just as a gardener places a weight on plants so that they develop strong trunks, God acts so that men respond in predictable ways. God sent a dream to Joseph. Joseph as prophet must only speak what God commands him to speak, offending both his father and his brothers, setting of a chain of events that transports God's people from living a nomadic life depending on rain which in turn depends on God, to living a life sustained by the world, so that they learn about what it means to be idolaters, people serving things that make life bearable.

Philosophers have always concluded that the reality of this world is that life is meaningless and painful. The article in Wikipedia is actually helpful in unpacking nihilism, existentialism and absurdism.

 

[rakovsky]

Hello, Wordkeeper:

What if he said that "all religions including Christianity begin as cults for mentally weak and delusioned people" and repeated this idea 10 X without explaining it in any way that would be compatible with the foundations of your belief system?​

He said those who believed his preaching10x would have the life He had plus times and explained it 10x plus times, so where did he drop the ball?

Jesus probably did not "drop the ball", because he probably made it even clearer than the plain words of scripture what he meant, when he said that he gave His "flesh for the world" and that "you must 'eat' and 'chew' my flesh and drink my blood". He had an audience directly with him to explain things so that they got the right idea, and the disciples spent three years with him. The gospels even say that Jesus explained the inner meaning of his parables to them.

And, like the Evangelical website Credo House and the major Reformed commentator Gill write, the "many disciples" in John 6 were taking Jesus' repeated statements about eating and "chewing" his "flesh" in their plain, literal meaning. It never says that this is a symbol, but simply repeats the idea of chewing his flesh in more and more detailed language.

Therefore, in terms of getting his disciples to understand his meaning of "eating" and "chewing" his "flesh", Jesus did not drop the ball.

A second question arises though: Did the Bible "drop the ball" for the Calvinists who showed up 1400+ years later and said that Jesus was just using a symbol? If the Bible meant to say that this is not just a symbol, how could it make that clearer?

On one hand, it could say that outright: "This is not a metaphor". But that is not the Bible's way of doing things. Disciples were confused about many things like how Jesus could give his "flesh" to eat (answer: the Eucharist: "This is my body"), or what "Resurrection" meant (answer: Jesus' body left the tomb). The Bible never comes in and says "This is not a metaphor" or "This is a metaphor".

But then, isn't the Bible responsible if Calvinists got the meaning wrong? That would be like saying that the Bible is responsible when those groups get confused about infant baptism, Dispensationalism, Christian Zionism, and many other controversies that showed up 1400+ years later. The Bible succeeded in its goal of teaching its audience what it meant and passing that down in the early Christians' explanations like those of Antioch's Christian leader St. Ignatius from 110 AD. And most Christians in the world belong to churches that do teach that Jesus is directly in the bread.(Lutherans, Catholics, Orthodox, High Anglicans)

Next you asked:

Words, like the mustard seed in the expression above, are concepts. Granted, words really are etched in the mind physically in the same way that they are etched in a computer's hard drive.


However, Christ and God and Christ's flesh are not just concepts, but real things.

It's one thing for a concept to metaphorically abide in a person, and another for God and Christ, real spirits, to abide in people. Do you agree or would you say that the Holy Spirit and Christ's spirit do not actually abide in people, even though the Spirit abided in the ancient Temple as the Shekinah, or flames were seen/envisioned over the apostles' heads at Pentecost?

Why should I say that when Scripture says the opposite?

To answer your question: There are Reformed and Christian allegoricists who use the same kind of logic.

Christians all agree that "the word", "the door", "the lamb", "the vine" are conceptual terms about Christ. Christ did not point to a foor and say "this is me".

But when it comes to Jesus pointing to real, specific things (eg. the bread Jesus pointed to in the Last Supper), the early Christian teachings passed down treat them as real, while the Reformed movement that appeared in c.1530 AD has begun to treat them as metaphors. The famous 17th c. Reformed writer J.Mede said that "demoniacs" were just mentally ill people, not having real demons. The Presbyterian pastor Rev. Teri says that demons are just a term for dark forces and aren't actual beings. So when the gospels say that Jesus put the specific demons into the pigs, for those Reformed it means it was just a metaphor.

So for the ancient mind, a spirit being, like a demon could be in something else like a pig. And for the Christian teachings passed down, this is literal, because there was a real, specific demon at hand and Jesus was not just using a concept or "metaphor". But for Calvin's mentality, the idea of a being going inside something else, especially Jesus' ability to go inside bread starts to get tough.

Here is where Calvin breaks down on this in the Institutes. The Lutherans say that Jesus' spirit body (See Corinthians where Paul talks about spirit bodies) went into and through the closed tomb and went into and through the wall in John 20, and Calvin responds:

. The [Lutherans'] objection, that Christ came forth from the closed sepulchre, and came in to his disciples while the doors were shut (Mt. 28:6; John 20:19), gives no better support to their error. For as the water, just as if it had been a solid pavement, furnished a path to our Saviour when he walked on it (Mt. 14.), so it is not strange that the hard stone yielded to his step; although it is more probable that the stone was removed at his command, and forthwith, after giving him a passage, returned to its place. To enter while the doors were shut, was not so much to penetrate through solid matter, as to make a passage for himself by divine power, and stand in the midst of his disciples in a most miraculous manner.

Calvin tries to get out of the idea of Jesus going through tomb walls by claiming that Jesus moved the stone to leave and then moved it back. Why would Jesus move the stone back? It looks like Calvin prefers to make it look like Jesus didn't go through the walls because that sounds hard for him to believe as it would break with a materialist concept of Jesus body.

And then when it comes to the house doors Calvin makes a nonsensical distinction, that Jesus didn't "penetrate" through the closed door like Lutherans teach, but that he "passed through" the door. Why would Calvin try to make that distinction? Because if Jesus can penetrate through a door, then he can penetrate through bread too, which is the Lutheran teaching on the Eucharist. But for Calvin, the older concepts of Jesus' body like its ability to "scatter", as he put it, into pieces of bread across the world like the multiplication of the loaves are "absurd". He can't handle them because they go against his concepts of matter and reason.

So this is why I said that in the ancient Christian mindset, the idea of a being with a "Spirit body" to go into something is normal, but for Calvin, this is "incredible". And in fact this is the main reason Calvin gives in the Institutes for teaching that Jesus' body isn't in the Eucharist bread - because it's "incredible" for Jesus' body to work that way.

And the way that many Reformed and modern skeptics have been dealing with supernatural concepts that they find "incredible" is by calling them metaphors, like demons, angels, the Resurrection, water Baptism, Jesus being in the Eucharist bread. Reformed who think that Isaiah 53 is about the nation Israel not the Messiah would say that it was just used as a metaphor by early Christians.

Quakers decided that since in the Zwinglian/Evangelical view the Christian rituals were only outward sings / metaphors, then they weren't actually essential to faith, but just carnal, and we must instead follow the "Spirit" and be in "The Light". Quakers would apply Calvin's words about miracle objects to the supposed "outward rituals" when Calvin wrote that "all that is carnal in Jesus Christ must be forgotten and put aside, and that we should employ and direct our whole affections to seek and possess him according to the spirit."

The metaphorizing train has come to its final destination where "outward" rituals like Eucharist and not just "infant baptism" as rejected by Reformed Baptists, but "water baptism" itself aren't needed anymore.

 

[hedrick]

I think Calvin is objecting to a materialist view of what happened. He suggests that for both the resurrection and going into the room “the hard stone yielded to his path” (or was temporarily removed) and that he made a passage for himself through the door, rather than penetrating through solid matter.

What exactly is the distinction between making a passage through the door and penetrating solid matter? In both cases his resurrected body went through the door. I would suggest that the difference is that what he means by penetrating solid matter is that his material body mixed with the material door. If that’s what he means, I would agree with him. Particularly based on his commentary on John, I think his point is that Jesus was miraculously present in the room, not that he had a body whose property was that it could occupy the same space as a door. I’m not sure whether he’s right in that, but his objection is surely not materialistic or anti-supernatural. It’s not anti-supernatural to prefer saying he appeared miraculously rather than that he had a body with unusual properties. It may be wrong, of course, but the issue here was supposed anti-supernatural bias. (Personally, I think it likely that resurrected bodies have different properties than ours, though whether coexisting with doors is one I can’t say. I’d say it’s more likely that his body has the property of being able to move from one place to another directly without having interpenetrate all the objects between. But this is all speculation with little evidence.)

In the passage itself there’s actually no suggestion that he went through the door, whether miraculously or by having a body that can coexist with doors. He simply appears in the room.

Similarly, there is no description of his resurrection. The only statement about how the stone was rolled away is in Matthew, and that says it was an angel. But it’s not so clear that this was the moment of resurrection. As far as I’m concerned both in the resurrection and the appearance in the room, the natural explanation is that he miraculously appeared or disappeared. But there’s no reason from the NT to think that his body was ever in more than one place at a time. The ascension, and John 20:17, both seem to see his body as present either on earth or heaven. My own conclusions are based strictly on the NT accounts, not any preconception of how physical laws might or might not apply.

 

[rakovsky]

Hello, Hedrick!

I think Calvin is objecting to a materialist view of what happened.

Luther's belief was that Jesus went into and through the tomb wall.
What is the point of Calvin's proposed invention that Jesus moved the stone away, walked out and moved the stone back, other than to attempt to dispel Luther's notion that Jesus supernaturally passed through the tomb wall?

He suggests that for both the resurrection and going into the room “the hard stone yielded to his path” (or was temporarily removed) and that he made a passage for himself through the door, rather than penetrating through solid matter.

What exactly is the distinction between making a passage through the door and penetrating solid matter? In both cases his resurrected body went through the door. I would suggest that the difference is that what he means by penetrating solid matter is that his material body mixed with the material door.

"Penetrating" does not mean mixing. If you stick a pencil through a piece of paper, it penetrates it without mixing.
According to Chalcedon, Christ's human and divine natures and essences united and cooperated, but expressly did not "mix". In the ancient Christian, Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran mentality, there is no problem with thinking that Jesus in a spirit body was in a wall or bread anymore than spirit beings entered people or animals in the OT or NT.

If that’s what he means, I would agree with him. Particularly based on his commentary on John, I think his point is that Jesus was miraculously present in the room, not that he had a body whose property was that it could occupy the same space as a door.

Yes, he is trying to exclude the possibility that a spirit body could occupy the same space as a door. However, in mystical thinking, spirit beings don't have to obey physical laws and can pass through matter.

This is only a problem in a materialistic concept of beings.

I’m not sure whether he’s right in that, but his objection is surely not materialistic or anti-supernatural. It’s not anti-supernatural to prefer saying he appeared miraculously rather than that he had a body with unusual properties. It may be wrong, of course, but the issue here was supposed anti-supernatural bias.

Yes, because he made this nonsensical distinction of penetrating a door vs. passing through it in order to avoid Luther's belief that Jesus could penetrate bread (impanation).

Calvin called Luther's beliefs "absurd", "foolish", "incredible", but it runs up against the problem that Jesus used this mode of being in penetrating through a wall. So Calvin tried to find a way to get around it, but ran up against the impossibility of doing so. Thus he made a nonsensical distinction between "penetrating" and "passing through".

(Personally, I think it likely that resurrected bodies have different properties than ours, though whether coexisting with doors is one I can’t say. I’d say it’s more likely that his body has the property of being able to move from one place to another directly without having interpenetrate all the objects between. But this is all speculation with little evidence.)

OK. Could a miniscule piece of Jesus' spirit move from its place in heaven and then go between bread molecules without impenetrating each molecule?

In the passage itself there’s actually no suggestion that he went through the door, whether miraculously or by having a body that can coexist with doors. He simply appears in the room.

According to Calvin, he passed/went through the door.
I don't have a problem with thinking that Jesus materialized and dematerialized at various locations, since I don't hold Jesus body to standards of physics.
But to say that Jesus' flesh dematerializes and materialized at different locations without passing between them seems to run against the same kinds of expectations Calvin used to judge that Jesus' body could not be "scattered into pieces".

If Jesus "simply appearing" in different locations were consistent with the Calvinist system, why does Calvin feel a need to propose that Jesus moved the stone away and back and that he at least passed through the door instead of just materializing on the other side of it?

Similarly, there is no description of his resurrection. The only statement about how the stone was rolled away is in Matthew, and that says it was an angel. But it’s not so clear that this was the moment of resurrection. As far as I’m concerned both in the resurrection and the appearance in the room, the natural explanation is that he miraculously appeared or disappeared. But there’s no reason from the NT to think that his body was ever in more than one place at a time. The ascension, and John 20:17, both seem to see his body as present either on earth or heaven. My own conclusions are based strictly on the NT accounts, not any preconception of how physical laws might or might not apply.

In Revelation 1, Jesus appears to the apostle John who was then on Patmos and touches John. Contact with the hands, according to John 20, was a method for Jesus to show that his body was for real.
In Revelation 1, John sees Jesus' body and writes: "He laid His right hand on me, saying to me, 'Do not be afraid;'"

But under the Calvinist system that bans concepts like bilocation under its late renaissance perceptions of reality, Jesus' supernatural, transfigured spirit body is stuck up in heaven, so His spirit body couldn't be on earth touching people with His hand.

Of course, since spirits can be in two places at once (like Jesus' spirit being in believers), I don't know why a body reborn as spirit couldn't be, unless we keep subjecting it to material laws of physics like the Lutherans said that Calvin was doing.

 

[Wordkeeper]

Hello, Wordkeeper:

Jesus probably did not "drop the ball", because he probably made it even clearer than the plain words of scripture what he meant, when he said that he gave His "flesh for the world" and that "you must 'eat' and 'chew' my flesh and drink my blood". He had an audience directly with him to explain things so that they got the right idea, and the disciples spent three years with him. The gospels even say that Jesus explained the inner meaning of his parables to them.

And, like the Evangelical website Credo House and the major Reformed commentator Gill write, the "many disciples" in John 6 were taking Jesus' repeated statements about eating and "chewing" his "flesh" in their plain, literal meaning. It never says that this is a symbol, but simply repeats the idea of chewing his flesh in more and more detailed language.

Therefore, in terms of getting his disciples to understand his meaning of "eating" and "chewing" his "flesh", Jesus did not drop the ball.

A second question arises though: Did the Bible "drop the ball" for the Calvinists who showed up 1400+ years later and said that Jesus was just using a symbol? If the Bible meant to say that this is not just a symbol, how could it make that clearer?

On one hand, it could say that outright: "This is not a metaphor". But that is not the Bible's way of doing things. Disciples were confused about many things like how Jesus could give his "flesh" to eat (answer: the Eucharist: "This is my body"), or what "Resurrection" meant (answer: Jesus' body left the tomb). The Bible never comes in and says "This is not a metaphor" or "This is a metaphor".

But then, isn't the Bible responsible if Calvinists got the meaning wrong? That would be like saying that the Bible is responsible when those groups get confused about infant baptism, Dispensationalism, Christian Zionism, and many other controversies that showed up 1400+ years later. The Bible succeeded in its goal of teaching its audience what it meant and passing that down in the early Christians' explanations like those of Antioch's Christian leader St. Ignatius from 110 AD. And most Christians in the world belong to churches that do teach that Jesus is directly in the bread.(Lutherans, Catholics, Orthodox, High Anglicans)

Next you asked:

To answer your question: There are Reformed and Christian allegoricists who use the same kind of logic.

Christians all agree that "the word", "the door", "the lamb", "the vine" are conceptual terms about Christ. Christ did not point to a foor and say "this is me".

But when it comes to Jesus pointing to real, specific things (eg. the bread Jesus pointed to in the Last Supper), the early Christian teachings passed down treat them as real, while the Reformed movement that appeared in c.1530 AD has begun to treat them as metaphors. The famous 17th c. Reformed writer J.Mede said that "demoniacs" were just mentally ill people, not having real demons. The Presbyterian pastor Rev. Teri says that demons are just a term for dark forces and aren't actual beings. So when the gospels say that Jesus put the specific demons into the pigs, for those Reformed it means it was just a metaphor.

So for the ancient mind, a spirit being, like a demon could be in something else like a pig. And for the Christian teachings passed down, this is literal, because there was a real, specific demon at hand and Jesus was not just using a concept or "metaphor". But for Calvin's mentality, the idea of a being going inside something else, especially Jesus' ability to go inside bread starts to get tough.

Here is where Calvin breaks down on this in the Institutes. The Lutherans say that Jesus' spirit body (See Corinthians where Paul talks about spirit bodies) went into and through the closed tomb and went into and through the wall in John 20, and Calvin responds:

Calvin tries to get out of the idea of Jesus going through tomb walls by claiming that Jesus moved the stone to leave and then moved it back. Why would Jesus move the stone back? It looks like Calvin prefers to make it look like Jesus didn't go through the walls because that sounds hard for him to believe as it would break with a materialist concept of Jesus body.

And then when it comes to the house doors Calvin makes a nonsensical distinction, that Jesus didn't "penetrate" through the closed door like Lutherans teach, but that he "passed through" the door. Why would Calvin try to make that distinction? Because if Jesus can penetrate through a door, then he can penetrate through bread too, which is the Lutheran teaching on the Eucharist. But for Calvin, the older concepts of Jesus' body like its ability to "scatter", as he put it, into pieces of bread across the world like the multiplication of the loaves are "absurd". He can't handle them because they go against his concepts of matter and reason.

So this is why I said that in the ancient Christian mindset, the idea of a being with a "Spirit body" to go into something is normal, but for Calvin, this is "incredible". And in fact this is the main reason Calvin gives in the Institutes for teaching that Jesus' body isn't in the Eucharist bread - because it's "incredible" for Jesus' body to work that way.

And the way that many Reformed and modern skeptics have been dealing with supernatural concepts that they find "incredible" is by calling them metaphors, like demons, angels, the Resurrection, water Baptism, Jesus being in the Eucharist bread. Reformed who think that Isaiah 53 is about the nation Israel not the Messiah would say that it was just used as a metaphor by early Christians.

Quakers decided that since in the Zwinglian/Evangelical view the Christian rituals were only outward sings / metaphors, then they weren't actually essential to faith, but just carnal, and we must instead follow the "Spirit" and be in "The Light". Quakers would apply Calvin's words about miracle objects to the supposed "outward rituals" when Calvin wrote that "all that is carnal in Jesus Christ must be forgotten and put aside, and that we should employ and direct our whole affections to seek and possess him according to the spirit."

The metaphorizing train has come to its final destination where "outward" rituals like Eucharist and not just "infant baptism" as rejected by Reformed Baptists, but "water baptism" itself aren't needed anymore.

Calvin did what all scholars do: form a conclusion and strengthen that conclusion. A part of strengthening one's own theory is to attack opposing theories.


He found extensive proof to support his conclusion that flesh meant preaching. He debunked views that flesh meant the flesh of Christ using rationalistic argumentation, but also by providing a Scriptural basis for his rebuttals as seen in the link I provided.

 

[rakovsky]

Calvin did what all scholars do: form a conclusion and strengthen that conclusion. A part of strengthening one's own theory is to attack opposing theories.

He found extensive proof to support his conclusion that flesh meant preaching. He debunked views that flesh meant the flesh of Christ using rationalistic argumentation, but also by providing a Scriptural basis for his rebuttals as seen in the link I provided.

Hello, Wordkeeper!

In the quotation below from his commentaries, Calvin does say that in John 6 the flesh meant the flesh of Christ!

When I went to study Isaiah 53, I didn't know whether the traditional Christian view was right that Is. 53 was about the Messiah or if the modern Rabbis and the Protestant Study Bibles I had heard about were right that it isn't. So I went into my own study without expectations of which side was right, even biased toward the latter. But when I found that the "Servant" could only be read consistently as the Messiah (eg. because he is guiltless, unlike the nation), I decided that the Servant must be Messiah.

Wouldn't you say that if a person starts his study from the viewpoint that one side must be right and the other side is "absurd" or "foolish", then he ends up reinterpreting the Bible to just match the "side" that he already picked? This is what Quakers seem to me to do - they form the conclusion that rituals are only nonessential "outward signs", and then they read the Bible in light of that conclusion, or as you said, to "strengthen" it.

As Calvin explains in the Institutes, he found the idea of pieces of Christ's body to be inside bread to be "incredible". And then in addressing the Lutheran claims that Jesus penetrate bread if he penetrated a tomb stone (John 20), Calvin invented the proposal that Jesus could have moved the stone away and moved it back secretly. I don't know why Jesus couldn't go through a tombstone or why he would move it back, so it looks to me like Calvin was using the Bible to excuse the conclusions that he already reached about Jesus' ability to penetrate objects.

For me, it seems that the best way to enter onto this question would be with an open mind, recognizing that in the 1st century mindset, Jesus' spirit body could be in bread, it could go into and through a wall, just like Jesus' spirit goes into believers, just like the Holy Spirit goes into believers like at Pentecost, just like Jesus could send non-metaphorical demon beings into pigs, and just like the Holy Spirit went into Mary to work Jesus. Then we can see how reading the term "my flesh" consistently in John 6 shows that Jesus was speaking of his flesh, not just "preaching.

Wordkeeper!
Here is where Calvin reads "my flesh" as referring to Jesus' body in John 6.
Jesus says:
"if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever; and the bread which I shall give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world."

Calvin comments on this verse:

The bread which I shall give is my flesh.
As this secret power to bestow life, of which he has spoken, might be referred to his Divine essence, he now comes down to the second step, and shows that this life is placed in his flesh, that it may be drawn out of it. It is, undoubtedly, a wonderful purpose of God that he has exhibited life to us in that flesh, where formerly there was nothing but the cause of death. And thus he provides for our weakness, when he does not call us above the clouds to enjoy life, but displays it on earth, in the same manner as if he were exalting us to the secrets of his kingdom. And yet, while he corrects the pride of our mind, he tries the humility and obedience of our faith, when he enjoins those who would seek life to place reliance on his flesh, which is contemptible in its appearance.

But an objection is brought, that the flesh of Christ cannot give life, because it was liable to death, and because even now it is not immortal in itself; and next, that it does not at all belong to the nature of flesh to quicken souls. I reply, though this power comes from another source than from the flesh, still this is no reason why the designation may not accurately apply to it; for as the eternal Word of God is the fountain of life, (John 1:4,) so his flesh, as a channel, conveys to us that life which dwells intrinsically, as we say, in his Divinity. And in this sense it is called life-giving, because it conveys to us that life which it borrows for us from another quarter. This will not be difficult to understand, if we consider what is the cause of life, namely, righteousness. And though righteousness flows from God alone, still we shall not attain the full manifestation of it any where else than in the flesh of Christ; for in it was accomplished the redemption of man, in it a sacrifice was offered to atone for sins, and an obedience yielded to God, to reconcile him to us; it was also filled with the sanctification of the Spirit, and at length, having vanquished death, it was received into the heavenly glory. It follows, therefore that all the parts of life have been placed in it, that no man may have reason to complain that he is deprived of life, as if it were placed in concealment, or at a distance.

Which I shall give for the life of the world. The word give is used in various senses. The first giving, of which he has formerly spoken, is made daily, whenever Christ offers himself to us. Secondly, it denotes that singular giving which was done on the cross, when he offered himself as a sacrifice to his Father; for then he delivered himself up to death for the life of men, and now he invites us to enjoy the fruit of his death. For it would be of no avail to us that that sacrifice was once offered, if we did not now feast on that sacred banquet. It ought also to be observed, that Christ claims for himself the office of sacrificing his flesh. Hence it appears with what wicked sacrilege the Papists pollute themselves, when they take upon themselves, in the mass, what belonged exclusively to that one High Priest.

It sounds from the last sentence that Calvin is getting offended by Jesus' words about eating his flesh were it taken literally.
But that is exactly what Jesus asks the disciples next about the teaching that Jesus came from heaven and they would eat his flesh: "Are you offended?"
As the Evangelical Credo House explains: "many disciples" were offended about eating Jesus' body and left Jesus.

Calvin continues:

[Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you have not life in you.]
When he says, the flesh of the Son of man, the expression is emphatic; for he reproves them for their contempt, which arose from perceiving that he resembled other men. The meaning therefore is: "Despise me as much as you please, on account of the mean and despicable appearance of my flesh, still that despicable flesh contains life; and if you are destitute of it, you will nowhere else find any thing else to quicken you."
.... this discourse does not relate to the Lord's Supper, but to the uninterrupted communication of the flesh of Christ, [161] which we obtain apart from the use of the Lord's Supper.

54. He who eateth my flesh.
This is a repetition, but is not superfluous; for it confirms what was difficult to be believed, That souls feed on his flesh and blood, in precisely the same manner that the body is sustained by eating and drinking. Accordingly, as he lately testified that nothing but death remains for all who seek life anywhere else than in his flesh, so now he excites all believers [162] to cherish good hope, while he promises to them life in the same flesh.

For Calvin, our souls do feed on Christ's real flesh, based on John 6.
A consistent reading of John 6 forces Calvin into reading it this way, even though he then concludes that this does not refer to the Eucharist ritual, but just to a real process where our souls really eat Jesus' flesh.
This is a strange conclusion by Calvin though that John 6 is about Eucharist, because elsewhere Calvin writes that this is what happens during the Eucharist. Calvin just doesn't think that Jesus' spirit is in the bread that goes into the mouth, so that in his view we doesn't actually chew Jesus' spirit body with our mouth, for that would be "absurd" in his rationalistic mentality.

Follow up question: If Calvin, the Catholics, and the Orthodox are right that "flesh and blood" in John 6 means Jesus' flesh and blood, and if it's easily conceivable to ancient minds that Jesus could be in walls, bread, or people, then why not read "eat" and "chew" as also being real terms, just like "flesh and blood" are?

Calvin's answer is that "eat" is a metaphor for faith:

If any man eat of this bread. Whenever he uses the word eat, he exhorts us to faith, which alone enables us to enjoy this bread, so as to derive life from it. [157] Nor is it without good reason that he does so, for there are few who deign to stretch out their hand to put this bread to their mouth; and even when the Lord puts it into their mouth, there are few who relish it, but some are filled with wind, and others -- like Tantalus -- are dying of hunger through their own folly, while the food is close beside them.

However, this is not quite right. In the Last Supper, Jesus did hand the apostles a piece of bread and said "Take and eat, this is my body", and when he said this, he did not just refer to faith, but to actual eating.

And I believe that John 6 makes a direct connection to the Last Supper in John 13, as both use unique parallel structures about "chewing", "Judas", the sending of the apostles and washing their feet.

 

[rakovsky]

Hedrick,

In his commentary on John 6, Calvin does read "my flesh" as referring to Jesus' actual flesh throughout, and he deals with the words "the flesh profiteth nothing" by agreeing with what I and Kretzman said about Jesus' body becoming spiritualized. He just makes an exception for the words "eat" and "chew" which he says are only spiritual. However, Calvin is wrong about the last part, as we know that "eat"("Take eat this is my body") and "chew" (about chewing the bread in John 13) were meant literally too about the Supper. Here is where Calvin talks about this:

Nor do I approve of the views of those who say, that the flesh of Christ profiteth, so far as he was crucified, but that, when it is eaten, it is of no advantage to us; for, on the contrary, we must eat it, that, having been crucified, it may profit

Augustine thinks that we ought to supply the word only, or by itself, as if it had been said, "The flesh alone, and by itself, profiteth not," [173] because it must be accompanied by the Spirit This meaning accords well with the scope of the discourse, for Christ refers simply to the manner of eating. He does not, therefore, exclude every kind of usefulness, as if none could be obtained from his flesh; but he declares that, if it be separated from the Spirit, it will then be useless. For whence has the flesh power to quicken, but because it is spiritual? Accordingly, whoever confines his whole attention to the earthly nature of the flesh, will find in it nothing but what is dead; but they who shall raise their eyes to the power of the Spirit, which is diffused over the flesh, will learn from the actual effect and from the experience of faith, that it is not without reason that it is called quickening

We now understand in what manner the flesh is truly food, and yet it profiteth not It is food, because by it life is procured for us, because in it God is reconciled to us, because in it we have all the parts of salvation accomplished. It profiteth not, if it be estimated by its origin and nature; for the seed of Abraham, which is in itself subject to death, does not bestow life, but receives from the Spirit its power to feed us; and, therefore, on our part also, that we may be truly nourished by it, we must bring the spiritual mouth of faith.

So if Calvin is right that flesh means flesh in John 6, and you and I are right that John 6 is about eating the last supper, where does that leave you and I about "eating the flesh"?

 

[rakovsky]

Calvin's view of the Eucharistic bread is that Jesus was speaking literally about his body, but only figuratively about chewing it in John 6, whereas in the gospels narrating the Last Supper Jesus was speaking literally about chewing, but only that the bread was a figure.

 

[rakovsky]

Introduction by Nelson H. Minnich

...
Protestants insisted on the distinction between God and his creation, initially rejecting Aristotelianism and sacramentality as understood in the Roman Church. The Reformed and Radicals insisted that God is not physically present in the material world and that transubstantiation is a false teaching. After the early Church, they argued, God no longer manifested his power in miracles, and claims of apparitions and miracles wrought through saints were to be rejected as superstitious beliefs. But Protestantism per se did not disenchant the world. Instead, the doctrinal disagreements of the Reformation era sidelined disputed Christian truth claims and opened the door for the intellectual exclusion of God via univocal metaphysics and Occam’s razor through modern philosophy and science. In the seventeenth century (natural) philosophers tried to understand the world by using reason alone, identifying efficient causes, using mathematics, and seeing the world as governed by immutable natural laws. Natural theology using reason alone sought to understand the relationship between God and the world based on metaphysical assumptions of the via moderna in which God and nature belong to the same conceptual and ontological framework. Occam’s razor and an either/or conception of natural and supernatural causality increasingly restricted God’s role in the world. Once all events were defined as natural, miracles were explained away and there was no need for a God except as a remote first cause. Some philosophers turned God into Nature and Jesus Christ into an ethical sage. Nineteenth-century thinkers such as Friedrich Schleiermacher saw religion as the subjective realm of intuition and feelings. The intellectual elimination of God came not through the findings of science but through their conflation with assumptions of univocal metaphysics and the application of Occam’s razor to the relationship between God’s presence and natural regularities.

The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (review)
From: The Catholic Historical Review
Volume 98, Number 3, July 2012

 

[rakovsky]

Book review:

Gregory identifies two contributions of the Reformation. First, by embracing Scotist univocity and rejecting a T homistic sacramental view of life, the Reformation accidentally marginalised theology, because it created a space for the concept of the natural world as an immanent self-regulating system (2012:28, 43). Second ly, the Reformation brought religious and doctrinal controversies about that ‘obliterated the existing, shared frameworks of beliefs’ and caused contestation to such a degree that the only means for understanding the natural world would be reason rather than ‘contested Christian www.ccsenet.org/res Review of European Studies Vol. 5, No. 1; 2013 54 doctrines’ (2012:44, 47)

The Enlightenment and later movements in the nineteenth century, according to Gregory, attempted to a ddress the discordance that the Protestant Reformation brought by replacing the sola scriptura principle with the principle of sola ratio (2012:113). The only solution would be to divorce reason from religion and to establish a solid neutral foundation upon which knowledge could be built (cf 2012:114). However, this endeavour al so failed because there was never a time in the history of philosophy when philosophers agreed on what reason alone dictates. Reason ca nnot provide ‘self-evident truths’ because it cannot avoid epistemol ogical presuppositions (2012:123). Instead, sola ratio has only ‘replicated’ the problems ‘that stemmed from sola scriptura ’ in a secular sense (2012:126).


...
Thomas Aquinas (2006:136), for instance, stated unequivocally that knowledge of God cannot be attained through natural reason, but only revelation:

Although in this life revelation does not tell us what God is and so joins us to him as if to an unknown, nevertheless it helps us to know him better in that it shows us more and greater works of his and teaches us things about him that we can never arrive at by natural reason, as for instance that God is both three and one.​

The bold part is a challenge for me. What is to say that what materialistic Reasons says is true?

Perhaps Calvin's reasoning is that miracles like relic healings are within the natural world, and so they can be judged by "earthly" understanding as not happening and as "absurd"?

Calvin divides reason, giving it various depths of penetration according to its subject matter. He could write "this then, is the distinction: that there is one kind of understanding of earthly things; another of heavenly. I call 'earthly things' those which do not pertain to God or his Kingdom, to true justice, or to the blessedness of the future life; but which have their significance and relationship with regard to the present life and are, in a sense, confined within its bounds." (ICR II.ii.13)

http://www.iep.utm.edu/calvin/#SH2b

Dr. Bressen makes the same distinction between Orthodox and Reformed epistemology that I have, with the latter relying more on scholasticism:

...for the Reformed Christian subjective experience tends to take a back seat to objective reason (for an interesting paper on Calvin and reason see www.jsrhee.com/ST/Reason.htm).

...
The Reformed tend to focus more on a scholarly, analytical, catagorical engagement with the truth; whereas the Orthodox tend to promote more of an organic, synthetic, apophatic encounter. Yet, both want to “know” God.

For the Reformed Christian, their theological approach is based on a Western scholastic epistemology—from Augustine to Aquinas to Calvin to Sproul. The Reformed epistemology is informed by a singular source: the Holy Bible. The evidence for their truth is primarily based on logical consistency within a mostly literal rendering of Biblical accounts. Though secondary sources—archeology, linguistics, cultural anthropology, expert commentary, community consensus, etc—are taken into consideration, each individual determines their theological positions based on what they have reasoned for themselves as being true. Changes in theological position occur when “new”—relative to the individual—evidence is discovered or more logical arguments are deemed valid.

For the Orthodox Christian, their theological approach is based on an Eastern phenomenological epistemology —from the Cappadocian Fathers to Chrysostom to Palamas to Romanides. The epistemology is informed by a pluralism of sources: the Holy Bible, as well as the teachings of Orthodox Fathers and Mothers, Ecumenical Council decisions, the episcopacy within apostolic succession, the Church’s hymns, and the consensus of the laity—grouped together this is the “Tradition” of the Orthodox Church.
...
The icon encapsulates Orthodox theology better than anything else about the Church, not because of its symbolism nor its traditional style, but because the icon expresses that Christianity is to be experienced (“taste and see” Psalm 33:9/34:8) more than understood. You can neither fully comprehend an icon, nor the Orthodox Church, from an intellectually objective distance but rather only as an intimate subjective partaker.

Michael Bressem, Ph.D.

https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/orthodoxbridge/orthodox-phenomenology/

See also: John Calvin's Understanding of Human Reason in His Institutes, Jung S. Rhee:

An inquiry has been made about why the Reformed theology tends to be rationalistic, scholastic, and philosophical.
...
In his article “Calvin’s Theological Method and the Ambiguity in His Theology”, Leith contended that Calvin’s theological methodology was formally biblicism but really rationalism.[11] Calvin’s “implicit confidence in the competence of reason to theologize on the basis of’ the biblical materials” was the crucial factor in his theology. “In the second book of the Institutes Calvin left no doubt about the sinful corruption of reason, and everywhere he rejected reason as an avowed source of theology. However, reason did become a source of his theology through speculation about and organization of the biblical materials. Calvin betrays little doubt as to the full competence of reason in the systematization and rational elaboration of the biblical materials... On the basis of the presupposition that the Bible supplies infallible material for theology and that reason is competent to manipulate and theologize about those materials, Calvin was convinced that he possessed the truth.”[12] In another words, “While he avows the greatest loyalty to Scripture, he actually goes beyond Scripture as a result of an almost irresistible tendency to extrapolate rationally the scriptural data.”[13] According to Leith, this rationalistic tendency has dominated later Calvinism, though Calvin himself was relatively successful to overcome the continuing threat of rationalism.

 

[rakovsky]

This strongly Calvinist book by Van Til reflects how Calvinism goes against free will:

A Survey Of Christian
Epistemology
Volume 2 of the series
In Defense of Biblical Christianity
Presbyterian And Reformed Publishing Co.
...
It remains now to observe that Calvinism has been more truly theistic than either Lutheranism or Arminianism because it, better than they, has rid itself of the last vestiges of human independence or autonomy.

 

[MennoSota]

This strongly Calvinist book by Van Til reflects how Calvinism goes against free will:

The Bible goes against free will. In fact, you can't find free will in relation to redemption anywhere in the Bible.

God is Sovereign. We are not.

Carry on.

 

[rakovsky]

The Bible goes against free will. In fact, you can't find free will in relation to redemption anywhere in the Bible.

God is Sovereign. We are not.

Mennosota,
It sounds to me like you are right in describing the Calvinist idea of the Bible, but I wonder how many Calvinists would admit to what you just said?

Calvin writes:
“If what I teach is true, that those who perish are destined to death by the eternal good pleasure of God though the reason does not appear, then they are not found but made worthy of destruction.”( Calvin, Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.121)
In the robotic compulsory Calvinist scheme lacking free will, did God make creatures to destroy them and it is his "good pleasure" to do so? Is the adage is correct that Calvinism makes God a tyrant, with a theological system of robotic punitive pleasured sadism?
Is "no free will" also the PCUSA's position, Hedrick?

“…I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, …” Deuteronomy 30:19
If there is no free will, then there is no choice. But here there is a choice .

But does Calvinism teach robotic sadistic compulsion instead?

 

[MennoSota]

Mennosota,
It sounds to me like you are right in describing the Calvinist idea of the Bible, but I wonder how many Calvinists would admit to what you just said?

Calvin writes:
“If what I teach is true, that those who perish are destined to death by the eternal good pleasure of God though the reason does not appear, then they are not found but made worthy of destruction.”( Calvin, Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.121)
In the robotic compulsory Calvinist scheme lacking free will, did God make creatures to destroy them and it is his "good pleasure" to do so? Is the adage is correct that Calvinism makes God a tyrant, with a theological system of robotic punitive pleasured sadism?
Is this also the PCUSA's position, Hedrick?

What does the Bible say. I don't care about anything else.
Predestination is very clearly presented by God in the Bible. It's not some argument made by men (like free will). Predestination is spoken clearly in Ephesians 1. Being chosen by God is something the Bible shares from Genesis to Revelation. That's all I care about.