Major1, Good questions and I will be more that happy to respond to you.
As A Bible believer, all I can do is accept and follow what it says. That is the starting point for me and It makes NO difference to me what a Lutheran, Or Catholic or Baptist or anything else says,
IT IS ONLY what the Scriptures say.
"This IS my Body...This IS my Blood. Seems they are very, very clear about the fact that the bread and wine were changed into the Body and Blood of our Lord."
That being said.....You are correct. I can not accept Transubstantiation as is it NOT taught in the Scriptures.
First of all, I am not Roman Catholic, so I don't discuss Transubstantiation. I am Orthodox. We believe the same thing, except we refer to the change in the bread and wine as "The Holy Mysteries." We don't try to define everything in the scholastic manner that the Roman Church has done.
That said, I just showed you that Jesus Himself said "This is my Body." Your argument is not with me.
Transubstantiation is solely a doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. The Catechism of the Catholic Church defined this doctrine in section 1376.
That says that the Roman Catholic Church teaches that once an ordained priest blesses the bread of the Lord's Supper, it is transformed into the actual flesh of Christ; and when he blesses the wine, it is transformed into the actual blood of Christ. Is such a concept biblical?
It is not.
Now, can anyone take Bible verses and MAKE them say that? YES THEY CAN!
The Scriptures most frequently used to do that is
John 6:32-58 and especially verses 53-57........ “Jesus said to them, ‘I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life … For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him … so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.’”
Myself and those who reject the idea of transubstantiation interpret Jesus’ words in John 6:53-57 as
figuratively or symbolically. SO then, WHO is correct??
That is not what Jesus was saying there. You are using this as an excuse not to believe. Lets look at the verse you are using for your defense:
Jhn 6:63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you,
they are spirit, and
they are life.
What Jesus is saying here is that the flesh, i.e., those who are hearing with the ears of the flesh, cannot understand this. Those who hear with the ears of the Spirit of God will understand that He meant exactly what He said.
This is why the Apostles taught that the Eucharist is His Flesh and Blood, because they were being led and taught by the Spirit of God as promised in John 16:13. Do you not think it odd that for 1500 years, this was the standard understanding until the Protestant Reformation came along and denied it? There was NO UNDERSTANDING like that of Protestantism for 1500 years. That alone should cause you to have serious pause. Was the Church wrong for 1500 years until the Protestants corrected them? If so, what happened to the promise of John 16:13? Was it just -- *poof* -- so much thin air and smoke?
How can we know which interpretation is correct?
By following the Church and what She has taught since the very beginning. Are you smarter than 2,000 years of Christians? I certainly am not, and I study the Early Fathers now constantly to be corrected.
Thankfully, Jesus made it exceedingly obvious what He meant.
Jn. 6:63 declares.......
“The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing.
The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.”
Jesus specifically stated that His words are “spirit.” Jesus was using physical concepts, eating and drinking, to teach spiritual truth. Just as consuming physical food and drink sustains our physical bodies, so are our spiritual lives saved and built up by spiritually receiving Him, by grace through faith. Eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking His blood are symbols of fully and completely receiving Him in our lives.
Not at all. To have Christ's very own energies enter into us is what gives us life. Life does not come from merely having good thoughts about God. The devils have good thoughts (i.e. correct doctrine) about God and Christ and they have not life. True life comes from UNION WITH CHRIST, not from intellectualism. This is the teaching of the Church and it is correct. No union, no life. Union is real, not intellectual. It is sustained by His very energies uniting to ours to empower us. And it is a real foretaste of the eternal state and being eternally united to Him.
The Scriptures declare that the Lord's Supper is a memorial to the body and blood of Christ in Luke 22:19 and 1 Corth. 11:24-25 and not the actual consumption of His physical body and blood. When Jesus was speaking in John chapter 6, Jesus had not yet had the Last Supper with His disciples, in which He instituted the Lord’s Supper.
To read the Lord’s Supper / Christian Communion back into John chapter 6 is unwarranted and not correct exegesis.
Then why did the Church teach this from the very beginning. You have absolutely NO - and I mean ZERO proof - that the Church had any other understanding than that of the Eucharist being Christ's very Flesh and Blood.
Then you stated..........
"And then there are whole issues of Christ's nature and being. Two natures in one Person or one divine nature overriding the human nature? The Bible is mute on that, isn't it?"
Again, I can not agree with you and what you are saying is not Biblical. It may be denominational teaching and in fact the Jehovah Witnesses and Christian Science people believe what you staed.
YOU and everyone else needs to understand this BASIC Christian teaching that comes from the Word of God. Jesus IS THE Christ and He is the most important person who has ever lived since he is the Savior, God in human flesh. If He wasn't then YOU and me my friend are not saved from our sin and we are going to the lake of fire.
Jesus is not half God and half man. He is fully divine and fully man. He is 100% God and 100% man. That means Jesus has two distinct NATURES: divine and human. Jesus is the Word who was God and was with God and was made flesh.
That is not the point. The Bible is not at all clear about the natures of Christ and how they exist. If it was clear, the Monophysite, Monothellite, and other heresies regarding His nature would never have come into play. You could have read the Bible and found out about this. It was the Church that defined the proper understanding in councils which were called to combat heresies.
John 1:1 says............
"In the beginning was the Word and the Word WAS with God and the Word WAS God".
John 1:14...................
"And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."
Whether YOU personally accept that and believe that is completely up to you because your rejection does not remove that as Bible fact. What this actually means Biblically and theologically is that in the single person of Jesus he has both a human and divine nature, God and man. The divine nature was not changed when the Word became flesh just as the Scriptures tell us.
Instead, the Word was joined with humanity as Paul confirms in Col. 2:9..........
"For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily!"
Is that what YOUR Bible says my friend????
Jesus' divine nature was not altered. Also, Jesus is not merely a man who "had God within Him," nor is he a man who "manifested the God principle." He is God in flesh, second person of the Trinity.
Hebrews 1:3
goes on to verify exactly that when it says.....
"The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word."
Jesus' two natures are not "mixed together" as is taught by Eutychianism, nor are they combined into a new God-man nature ( as taught by Monophysitism. They are separate yet act as a unit in the one person of Jesus. This is called the HYPOSTATIC UNION.
So you see, MY understanding is based in the Bible and NOT in any denomination theology. Thanks for asking and I hope this helps your understanding.
Baloney, sir! The Bible is totally without comment on how the two natures of Christ reside in the one, single Body of our Lord. Don't try to tell me that the Bible says anything other than Jesus is the pre-existent Word of the Father. This is special pleading, and it doesn't work with me. You are making claims that were simply unknown to the first four centuries of Christians and had to be worked out in councils, some of which were quite rancorous over these very issues. You are standing on the shoulders of giants when you make these correct statements. They are correct, but they are not anywhere in the Bible! Please don't try to confuse the teaching of Christ's divinity with that of the Hypostatic Union because they are not the same and the HU is not in the Bible anywhere.
