The Myth of Scriptural Literalism

The Liturgist said:

I would urge you both to focus on Martin Luther,

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Don't get me started on Martin Luther, or I'll get moderated.

Are you familiar with a book called, The Trail of Blood, by J. M. Carroll?

A verse can be many fold. The first fundamental fold is its literal meaning. Mostly you need to first accept the literal meaning before diving deeper into other fold meanings. So basically you take everything literal as the first thing to do.

2nd is the historical fold. You may need to understand the historical background on how the words were said.

The nature of the many-fold structure is for God's Word to convey through generations. Humans basically lack the ability to convey a historical message especially on a theory. We (especially ancient humans) don't have the ability to convey a theological theory. We only acquire a better ability after the invention of paper. So the literal fold of a message is for humans to convey the message by word of mouth or any ancient forms of record keeping (tablets, tree leaves, animal skins etc.), as humans to their maximum capability can only convey a message with plain meaning. God on the other hand embeds other fold meanings into the message. God enforces that the message remains intact through generations, without bringing humans' attention. God ensures the message under conveying is correct, while He does this without being noticed by humans such that faith is always invited.

3rd is the spiritual fold meaning. It is for a person to read it spiritually under the guidance of God the Holy Spirit. You need to first accept the literal meaning (such that the same message can at least convey through generations), but sometimes you can even neglect its historical background in order to read out its spiritual meaning. It is so because humans including the prophets sometimes are bounded by their historical background. So what they said is subject to a constrain of their knowledge. God on the other hand can convey the message without limit. For example, some said that earth is a dome, while some other said that earth is suspended in air. The former is subject to the constrain while the latter can go out such a constran of human knowlege.

4rd is the prophetic fold meaning. This may go wild and far fetched if not properly guided by God and the Holy Spirit.

5th is the non-reality fold meaning. A verse may be talking about something unknown to us as we can't have a chance to experience it. Usually it's tied to what heaven and hell are, and the like. Typical is Paul's experience about the Third Heaven. You will be able to fully understand what he said possibly only when God gives you a similar experience.

BobRyan said:
Amen - the details IN the text give reader the correct view - it is only bias against those details that results in other suggestions to the contrary of what we find in the text itself.

The Liturgist said:

On the contrary, the bias is in anti-Catholicism prejudicing people

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That is not even logical.

No rational argument can be made that non-Catholics look at any given text of scripture and ask "first what does the Catholic church say about this and second how can we get this text to not be in line with Catholic doctrine".

That sort of "explanation" that you offer does not even make sense. I don't know of anyone else that proposes such a thing.

You can't be serious.

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In my post that you take a snip from - I respond to 'details in the text" that are making the case. IN your post you avoid all the details in the text again - as if my claim that you need to avoid certain details in the text to make your case -- is somehow disproven by you then posting with content ignoring every detail in the text raised.

How is that sort of solution that you offer compelling once it is pointed out that you need to keep ignoring the details in the text???

Xeno.of.athens said:

Grumble, I wrote such a lovely post and none of you are paying attention!

see #53

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In that post you wrote --

Xeno.of.athens said:

Catholics in communion with the Holy See interpret according to the teaching of the Catholic Church, which teaching is both Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition steeped, and Magisterial authority interpreted.

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Which amounts to 'Catholics agree with Catholic teaching and tradition" -- and of course we do not doubt you for one single second on that point.

I could also post "Baptists agree with the Baptist Confession of Faith" - or something close to it. This would not be the surprising part.

The core of the issue not addressed in your post 53 is your title "myth of scriptural literalism" which is what I went directly after in my post talking about the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection of Christ, and His bodily ascension into heaven.

It is pretty hard to argue that nobody but a Catholic can read the NT and get that teaching right out the text - without any research at all into Catholic tradition and doctrine. In fact I am pretty sure you and I both agree on this point. Taking that text literally and accepting what it teaches when it comes to those doctrines is what we are all doing.

So it raises the question as to why you call it "myth"


BTW I do like this statement in your post "take scripture both literally and according to its genre, it avoids the kind of literalism that ignores the way stories are told in the holy scriptures". That is what we all are doing. That is how we get to what you call "scriptural literalism" -- we call it Exegesis and it is what we are using (Not sola-tradition).

The Liturgist said:

Our Lord did not say “This is a symbol of my body” and “This is a symbol of my blood.” When we read John 6 into the mix, and then throw in 1 Corinthians 11, especially 1 Corinthians 11:27-34 , it becomes clear.

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True and that is why your suggested idea here fails.

John 10 Jesus did not say "I am symbolically the DOOR" -- he said "I AM the DOOR" - - obviously it was a symbol a metaphor nonetheless. This is not even a little bit confusing.

Where then your doctrine around Jesus being a wooden door? IT is not there - because clearly that statement was a symbol.

Jesus said in John 6 "I AM the BREAD that came down out of heaven" -- and all of us agree NOBODY saw literal bread coming down out of heaven in John 6 NOR did anyone see Jesus looking like bread NOR did they bite him in John 6 NOR did Mary see bread fall out of heaven when she became pregnant with Christ.

In John 6 Jesus adds that "eating literal flesh is worthless" - saying it is "my WORDS That are Spirit and are LIFE".

In John 6 when Jesus asks if the faithful disciples are offended by the symbols used -- Peter says he gets the symbolism saying "Where shall we go? You have the WORDS of LIFE"

This is not even a little bit confusing for the ones looking at the details.

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And 1 Cor 11 makes it very clear that the Lord's Supper is participation in a memorial and NOT participation in a sacrifice
as noted repeatedly.

23 For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when He was betrayed, took bread; 24 and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” 25 In the same way He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.

He does not say "DO this TO ME" -- He says "do this in REMEMBRANCE of Me". It is a memorial of a past event. It is the details in the text itself that stop your suggestions.

AV1611VET said:

Don't get me started on Martin Luther, or I'll get moderated.

Are you familiar with a book called, The Trail of Blood, by J. M. Carroll?

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Yes, and its an exemplary work of the Landmark Baptist movement. However, historically, it is spectacularly inaccurate. It ignores the existence of the Oriental Orthodox and the Church of the East, the former being excommunicated in the aftermath of the Council of Chalcedon for refusing to accept the Tome of Leo due to perceived similarities with Nestorianism, with the OO Patriarch of Alexandria, St. Dioscorus, being deposed, falsely accused of Monophysitism despite having anathematized Eutyches. It also ignores the Church of the East, which actually venerates Nestorius, and is often called by older historians, inaccurately, the Nestorian Church, when really this was the church in the Persian Empire and Asian lands east thereof, and also Yemen and the Yemenese Island of Socotra although adopted a psuedo-Chalcedonian Christology developed by its Patriarch Mar Babai the Great in the early 6th century.

Until the 15th century when the Muslim warlord Tamerlane and his descendants began killing most of them, leaving alive only the Assyrians in the Fertile Crescent and the Nasranis or St. Thomas Christians in India, who were evangelized by the Apostle Thomas, who was martyred in Kerala in 53 AD (because of Alexander the Great, Kerala was the Easternmost city with a large Jewish community, which only in the 20th century migrated en masse to Israel, prominent members including the famed hairdresser Vidal Sassoon, and was thus the end of the road for St. Thomas, who on his way there established churches in Edessa, Nineveh and Seleucia-Cstesiphon, which replaced ancient Babylon after the Euphrates shifted, and was replaced by Baghdad which directly borders the ruins of Babylon when the river shifted again) the Church of the East was the largest in the world geographically, and quite possibly in terms of membership.

We don’t know exactly how many members it had since the genocide of Tamerlane and the later genocides by the Ottomans, for instance, in 1915, and by ISIS in 2014-2018, have sought to erase the church from history, destroying ruins in the Syrian desert, for example, and likewise the Cultural Revolution and Communist regime are not ideal for archaeological research on it, although there is archaeological evidence of the Church of the East in China, Mongolia and Tibet. We do know that before Tamerlane it had 80 dioceses and afterwards, 20, and would lose more still under his barbaric Muslim sons.

Thus the work ignores the actual trail of blood, which also includes the persecution of the Oriental Orthodox by Justinian and successors and the eradication of the Numidian Orthodox Church in what is now The Sudan, and the Albanian Orthodox Church in Caucasian Albania, not to be confused with the Balkan state bordering Northern Macedonia, Greece and Serbia, and nowadays known as Azerbaijan due to the Muslim Azeris which displaced the Armenians and other surviving Christians (Caucasian Albania borders Armenia, and Georgia, also known as Iberia, not to be confused with the peninsula of Spain, Portugal, Andorra and Gibraltar, formerly the Roman provinces of Baetica, Lusitania and Hispania Terraconensis). And it ignores the wholesale massacre of all Christians in Africa outside of Egypt and modern day Ethiopia and Eritrea by the Visigoths and other Arian tribes which converted to Islam, and from which the Berbers are in part descended.

These churches wreck the whole Greek Catholic and Roman Catholic opporessing the proto-Protestants narrative, which is false.

Having studied the history of heresies such as Gnosticism extensively, and thusngroups like the Bogomils, and having read actual Cathar scriptures, and the Paulican Book of Keys, I can assure you their beliefs are nothing like that of the Waldensians or the subsequent Moravians and Protestants. Rather these were variants of the Gnostics, whose heresy centers around salvation by the possession of secret knowledge, dualism, and rejection of the material world as evil, created by an incompetent demiurge identified with God in the Old Testament. It is conceptually related to Neo-Platonism and Zoroastrianism. There are no surviving historically Gnostic groups that are Christian, the last ethnic Paulicians in Armenia converting to Orthodoxy in the 19th century (presumably Armenian Oriental Orthodoxy), although there is the remotest possibility the ethnic Paulican community in Romania and Bulgaria somehow preserved the faith through the Communist period while appearing to be Eastern Orthodox, but I doubt this.

There are however the Mandaeans of Iraq, who dispersed in 2003, fearing a genocide, however, who are Gnostics who regard St. John the Baptist as the true Messiah, and the Yazidis and Yarsanis of Kurdistan, who the Muslims regard as devil worshippers, but at least in the case of the Yazidis their beliefs appear to be crypto-Christian, and the Yazidis of Sinjar were victims of the ISIS genocide; they are also the largest ethnic minority in Armenia as they helped Armenians survive the Genocide of 1915, and in return were allowed to settle in the Republic of Armenia, and many did, remaining after the Soviets conquered it and presumably closed the border on the rest. Also the Alevis and Bektasis of Turkey, some of whom are nominally Muslim, some of whom are Muslim, and some of whom reject Islam in favor of a concept of pure Alevism called Ishikism, are quite possibly crypto-Christians, or else are related to an ancient grouping of Persian, Anatolian and Kurdish religions including Zoroastrianism and the aforementioned Yazidism and Yarsanism. In researching this I have devoured journals on Kurdish studies, but the subject is obscure.

However, what can be asserted is that the belief systems of these groups is radically dissimilar to that of any Baptist Christians today.

Nor were the Montanists or Donatists proto-Protestant. We have surviving literature from Tertullian, who became a Montanist because he believed the claims of Montanus to be the Paraclete and was attracted to the Montanist rigorist theology, which held one could not be forgiven after Baptism. Donatists were related, possibly, to Waldensians, but only by accident, and only possibly, in that Donatists believed that the efficacy of the sacraments depended on the purity of the priest officiating, but in all other respects were orthodox (likewise, the Novatians had a similar belief but were otherwise identical to the orthodox Nicene Church), and the Waldensians are said to have believed that any righteous Christian male could officiate the sacraments without requiring Episcopal ordination by the Roman church. The problem is of course the lack of pure or righteous Christian males to serve as priests; indeed, unless one accepts the heresy promoted by Pelagius, that we can save ourselves by not sinning, as opposed to requiring the grace of the Holy Spirit to help us have faith in Christ because we are incapable of not sinning or even sinning less without Him and need the forgiveness of God that faith in Christ provides.

Also priestly celibacy was the practice of the Roman church, but only the Roman church, never the Eastern churches (including most Eastern Catholic churches in communion with Rome, like the Ukrainian Greek Catholics), who never even formally prohibited married men from the episcopate, although in practice nearly all bishops have been monks, or in the case of the Church of the East which hasn’t had a monastery since Tamerlane, and with just a million members, 700,000 of them ethnic Assyrians who are the largest surviving group of native speakers of Aramaic, there is a need for reproduction, and attempts at restarting monasticism have failed, the bishops are merely celibate. There have throughout history been small numbers of mostly elderly married bishops in the Eastern churches who by virtue of their age are celibate and likely would need Viagara or a similar in most cases to desist from celibacy, which did not exist until very recently, so before the famous ad with Bob Dole, this would not have existed as a possibility. And there have always been married Chorepiscopi, or Choir Bishops, in the Church of the East and the Nasrani (St. Thomas) Orthodox churches of Kerala, India, as @Pavel Mosko and @coorilose can confirm, who have extremely limited powers of ordination but are not required to be celibate, but rather are usually married, in effect being like archpriests but with more power.

Thus, when I mentioned Landmark Baptism in the previous post, the Trail of Tears is what I was specifically referring to.

Also, the work suggests illegitimacy on the part of the Council of Nicaea and the Council of Constantinople. This is a problem for two reasons: the Council of Nicaea was convened to debate the teachings of Arius, who had been deposed and excommunicated by the Church of Alexandria under Patriarch St. Alexander, who was tortured but not killed under Dioscorus (his predecessor St. Paul of Alexandria was killed), and the Nicene Creed is the first line of defense of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, especially with the additions made at Constantinople that added to the clause “I believe in the Holy Spirit” the important “the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father, and together with the Father and Son is worshipped and glorified.”

At Nicaea, Emperor Constantine presided, but aside from ejecting St. Nicholas of Myrha, who was also automatically deposed from his episcopate, when he slapped Arius, but reinstated when he begged the Council for forgiveness, which was granted, on the basis of his reputation and his status as a confessor who like St. Alexander was tortured during the Diocletian persecution (forensic analysis of the relics of St. Nicholas, which were stolen in the Crusades from the Byzantine Empire and moved to Italy, indicates his nose was broken at least three times), it was St. Athanasius, the protodeacon to, and later the successor of, St. Alexander of Alexandria, whose oratory persuaded the council with near unanimity to anathematize the Arian heresy (all dissenting bishops except for Eusebius of Caesarea left before the final vote, and Eusebius of Caesarea assented but whined about it, desiring toleration of Arianism).

A decade later, and another bishop named Eusebius, of Nicomedia, who was a follower of Arius, crept his way into the court of Emperor St. Constantine and baptized him on his death bed, thus gaining dominance in spiritual matters over his son and heir Emperor Constantius, who exiled St. Athanasius, the new Patriarch of Alexandria, eventually sending him to Trier in Germany. He would not be allowed to return until if I recall the reign of Julian the Apostate.

Nevertheless, in his 39th Paschal Encyclical it was St. Athanasius who first mandated the 27 book New Testament canon we all use at present.

It is for good reason that Athanasius is called The Pillar of Orthodoxy, and after his death was lauded by St. Gregory the Theologian, who said the name of Athanasius had become synonymous with virtue, in that if we undermine Athanasius and Nicaea, the two vital extra-Biblical documents which all Christians rely on, the New Testament canon and the Nicene Creed, become invalid, and the whole edifice would come crashing down. At that point one might as well adopt the beliefs of the Paulicans or the Donatists or the Montanists, since without a Creed and a Canon, its pretty much anything goes. And we are blessed to live in a society where people have the freedom to do that, as the existence of Mormonism demonstrates. However, Christianity to be meaningful as a concept requires a definition such as that provided by St. Athanasius.

BobRyan said:

In my post that you take a snip from - I respond to 'details in the text" that are making the case. IN your post you avoid all the details in the text again - as if my claim that you need to avoid certain details in the text to make your case -- is somehow disproven by you then posting with content ignoring every detail in the text raised.

How is that sort of solution that you offer compelling once it is pointed out that you need to keep ignoring the details in the text???

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What details are you referring to? The Anamnesis? I addressed that earlier, and you disagreed with my response, ignoring the fact that Anamnesis means more than mere memorialization or remembrance in the sense of memorialization, but rather is more akin to recapitulation, as @Psalti Chrysostom can attest.

And you are ignoring larger details in the text, like 1 Corinthians 11:27-34. One could not get sick and die from failing to discern the body of Christ if the Body of Christ is not in the Eucharist. But you ignored that.

The Liturgist said:

What details are you referring to?

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Well let's start with the post you were responding to -- #55 -- a singular detail brought up there... and then ignored.

The Liturgist said:

The Anamnesis?

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Yeah that is a good example of something not in that post of mine.

The Liturgist said:

I addressed that earlier, and you disagreed with my response, ignoring the fact that Anamnesis means more than mere memorialization or remembrance in the sense of memorialization,

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do this "in Remembrance of me" - not "to invoke Me".


23 For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when He was betrayed, took bread; 24 and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” 25 In the same way He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.

Remembrance does not have in it the concept of "confecting the body, blood, soul and divinity" of the person you are remembering. I think you would agree that this point is pretty obvious. It is also not a term for "invoke" or "trigger me to perform a miracle".

IT is also not a term for "crucify Christ again" - but we do see that in Hebrews 6 if you are desperate to find such a concept --

Heb 6:
4 For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame.

We do not see that in "Remembrance" in 1 Cor 11
Same word as in Heb 10: "3 But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year."

The Liturgist said:

but rather is more akin to recapitulation,

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The sins were not re-enacted or recapitulated. I think we both know that.

I don't see how this is the least bit confusing.

BobRyan said:

1 Cor 11:
23 For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when He was betrayed, took bread; 24 and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” 25 In the same way He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.

Remembrance does not have in it the concept of "confecting the body, blood, soul and divinity" of the person you are remembering. I think you would agree that this point is pretty obvious. It is also not a term for "invoke" or "trigger me to perform a miracle".

IT is also not a term for "crucify Christ again" - but we do see that in Hebrews 6 if you are desperate to find such a concept --

Heb 6:
4 For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame.

We do not see that in "Remembrance" in 1 Cor 11
Same word as in Heb 10: "3 But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year."




The sins were not re-enacted or recapitulated. I think we both know that.

I don't see how this is the least bit confusing.

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The Liturgist said:

And you are ignoring larger details in the text, like 1 Corinthians 11:27-34. One could not get sick and die from failing to discern the body of Christ if the Body of Christ is not in the Eucharist.

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Paul engages in that same discussion in Heb 10 and it has nothing to do with "not finding real/literal flesh of Christ in the bread" etc.

Heb 10:
26 For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, 27 but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries. 28 Anyone who has ignored the Law of Moses is put to death without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 29 How much more severe punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?

In any case the text details you are not quoting in 1 Cor 11 are:
27 Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy way, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. 28 But a person must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For the one who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not properly recognize the body. 30 For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number are asleep. 31 But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. 32 But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world.
33 So then, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. 34 If anyone is hungry, have him eat at home, so that you do not come together for judgment

The Liturgist said:

One could not get sick and die from failing to discern the body of Christ if the Body of Christ is not in the Eucharist. But you ignored that.

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what the text actually says is -

27 Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy way, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. 28 But a person must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For the one who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not properly recognize the body. 30 For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number are asleep. 31 But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. 32 But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world. 33 So then, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. 34 If anyone is hungry, have him eat at home, so that you do not come together for judgment


Paul explains it 'in the details you don't post".

He says "so then"... and identifies something you don't even touch as IF he meant to write "SO Then when you eat the bread admit it is the literal body of Christ"... Instead of that Paul gives us the real details of his point and we find your insert via inference is not present there at all.

As for the assertion made by @BobRyan that the influence of anti-Catholicism on doctrine is not logical, while I would agree that allowing such a bias to influence doctrine is illogical, it is a fact that it has occurred, and the spectre of it looms large over this thread.

What would be objectionable about the doctrine of the Real Presence were it not for the RC embrace of transubstantiation? Scripturally, if we look at all texts of Eucharistic relevance, there is more support for that doctrine than Memorialism, and much more support for it than Zwinglianism, as Luther pointed out by etching “Hoc est corpus meum” into the table at Marburg.

Also, any recourse to John 6:63 in defense of a Zwinglian or Memorialist position is rendered untenable by Luther’s rebuttal of the same, and I shall not myself seek to re-enact the Marburg Colloquy, as I know less than either Luther or Zwingli, except perhaps about the liturgical rites of the Eastern churches, and the history thereof, which at the time Western Europeans could not have known without command of several languages and access to manuscripts which were obscure or non-existant outside of the custody of the churches which owned them, but which today thanks to the Internet we can read online, as they have been scanned and uploaded as PDFs, and in many cases translated into English.

BobRyan said:

Paul engages in that same discussion in Heb 10 and it has nothing to do with "not finding real/literal flesh of Christ in the bread" etc.

Heb 10:
26 For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, 27 but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries. 28 Anyone who has ignored the Law of Moses is put to death without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 29 How much more severe punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?

In any case the text details you are not quoting in 1 Cor 11 are:
27 Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy way, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. 28 But a person must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For the one who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not properly recognize the body. 30 For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number are asleep. 31 But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. 32 But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world.
33 So then, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. 34 If anyone is hungry, have him eat at home, so that you do not come together for judgment





what the text actually says is -

27 Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy way, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. 28 But a person must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For the one who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not properly recognize the body. 30 For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number are asleep. 31 But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. 32 But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world. 33 So then, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. 34 If anyone is hungry, have him eat at home, so that you do not come together for judgment


Paul explains it 'in the details you don't post".

He says "so then"... and identifies something you don't even touch as IF he meant to write "SO Then when you eat the bread admit it is the literal body of Christ"... Instead of that Paul gives us the real details of his point and we find your insert via inference is not present there at all.

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Now wait just a minute - historically you have quoted the KJV, and I was quoting the KJV, which says: “ 27Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. 28But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. 29For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. 30For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. 31For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. 32But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.

33Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, tarry one for another. 34And if any man hunger, let him eat at home; that ye come not together unto condemnation. And the rest will I set in order when I come.”

The accusation that I misquoted 1 Corinthians 11:27-34 because I used the KJV vs. whatever translation you used, which materially alters the meaning of 1 Corinthian 11:29 by replacing “damnation” with “judgement”, would be utterly baseless.

Since what I quoted is in the text as found in the KJV, and indeed the NKJV, I would request that you clarify your last post so as to make clear I did not misquote St. Paul and that you are using a different translation (and if you could identify the translation you are using that would be greatly appreciated).

Otherwise I can’t proceed, because if I am to be implictly or explictly accused of misquoting St. Paul with the phrase “what the text actually says is-“, which is the phrase in your post I am objecting to, for using the KJV versus a newer translation, I can’t discuss Scripture in that context.

AV1611VET said:

For the same reason a manufacturer would put out a product, then write a user manual that's literal.

The Bible is our Standard for faith and practice.

Imagine someone building a house, having their own interpretation of what a foot is.

One carpenter's ruler has a foot as nine inches, another ten, another twenty.

Can you imagine what the house would look like when it's done?

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The Bible is not a manufacturer's manual. That demeans it. It is a complex and beautiful compilation of many genres of inspired literature.

Jipsah said:

Comments?

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Hi Jipsah, I think I mostly agree with the OP, and most definitely agree when you speak on Creationism. My younger days I was a literal young earth Creationist, until I ran across Hugh Ross around late 1990 on the Trinity Broadcasting Network and he showed that there was both a Scientific as well as a "biblical basis" for being an old earth creationist which I still am.


For me it about a few things

1) If you study historic Biblical Interpretation in the Judeo-Christian tradition, things pretty much seem ad hoc mix of a lot of stuff from literal interpretation, allegory, formulating biblical principles based on other passages that do not have to do with the topic etc. To me principles of Biblical interpretation are not predictive but descriptive of how the Church interprets a given thing. I would cite the Rules of Hillel and say they were basically a toolbox that the Apostles, Apostolic Fathers and Early Church Fathers used concerning the various issues that the early church came across.




2) Conciliarism and Pastoral Care

These are big issues that often were big factors in Ecclesiology and how the Church functioned in the early days like Acts 15, and the times of the Apostolic Fathers.



3) Phronema Mindset on different issues

One topic I always wanted to talk about were various Theology of the Bible, Theory of the Bible ideas that are present in different people's minds. Basically, in the same way that you have Constitutional Theories in American Law and the law of other countries you got the same thing in Christianity towards the assumptions they make about the Bible etc. I'm talking about things like "Strict Constructionism", "Originalism", (more conservative views) vs. "the living Constitution" of folks like Justice Ginsberg and other liberals.





4) An Early Understanding (Acts 15 and onward) that Gentile Believers are not under the Mosaic Law period (as far as Circumcision, the Sabbath, Food Laws and related customs).

Jipsah said:

I pled guilty at the outset. After all these years I'm still recovering from the urge to find sketchy reasons to make the Bible say what I'd like it to say rather than what it says. It took, as the saying goes, a long road and a little wheel, to get to this point. From footwashing Baptist to tongue-speaking Pentecostalist to Methodist to Nazarene to Presbyterian to Anglo-Catholic, and I've had to learn to question a whole lot of "really meanses" to get where I am. A lot of what I've learned is that there's a filtering Scripture through any church's doctrine is probably not the best policy.

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This is why I feel sorry for church hoppers.

They don't really have any strong roots.

Jipsah said:

Except for the bits that you don't take literally, because "He can't have really meant that". Right?

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Not exactly.

When Jesus said He was a door, I didn't say to myself, "He didn't really mean that."

That's because I know what He said, and what He meant as well.

It's a matter of Biblical maturity.

Pavel Mosko said:

Hi Jipsah, I think I mostly agree with the OP, and most definitely agree when you speak on Creationism. My younger days I was a literal young earth Creationist, until I ran across Hugh Ross around late 1990 on the Trinity Broadcasting Network and he showed that there was both a Scientific as well as a "biblical basis" for being an old earth creationist which I still am.


For me it about a few things

1) If you study historic Biblical Interpretation in the Judeo-Christian tradition, things pretty much seem ad hoc mix of a lot of stuff from literal interpretation, allegory, formulating biblical principles based on other passages that do not have to do with the topic etc. To me principles of Biblical interpretation are not predictive but descriptive of how the Church interprets a given thing. I would cite the Rules of Hillel and say they were basically a toolbox that the Apostles, Apostolic Fathers and Early Church Fathers used concerning the various issues that the early church came across.

The Seven Rules of Hillel

2) Conciliarism and Pastoral Care

These are big issues that often were big factors in Ecclesiology and how the Church functioned in the early days like Acts 15, and the times of the Apostolic Fathers.



3) Phronema Mindset on different issues

One topic I always wanted to talk about were various Theology of the Bible, Theory of the Bible ideas that are present in different people's minds. Basically, in the same way that you have Constitutional Theories in American Law and the law of other countries you got the same thing in Christianity towards the assumptions they make about the Bible etc. I'm talking about things like "Strict Constructionism", "Originalism", (more conservative views) vs. "the living Constitution" of folks like Justice Ginsberg and other liberals.

Constitutionalism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

4) An Early Understanding (Acts 15 and onward) that Gentile Believers are not under the Mosaic Law period (as far as Circumcision, the Sabbath, Food Laws and related customs).

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How do you see the Rules of Hillel affecting the literal-historical hermeneutic of the School of Antioch and the typological-mystological-prophetic-allegorical hermeneutic of the School of Alexandria respectively?

Also, would you agree with my assertion that the most important Church Fathers like Saints Athanasius, Basil, Gregory the Theologian, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, Severus of Antioch, etc, used both techniques in different proportions based on the text they were interpreting, and their background, whereas Origen and Theodore of Mopsuestia pushed Alexandrian and Antiochian exegesis in a pure form past its relative braking point, and that contemporary Fundamentalist, Evangelical and certain Restorationist churches like the Church of Christ are making excessive use of the Antiochene technique. Young Earth Creationism could be considered a form of this, although I would note that there are ways of reconciling it with evolution, since the universe could have evolved in the mind of God for an infinite amount of time before being created.

Although I would also note that God created time (John 1:1-3) and being eternal is not subject to it, the Seven Days are only relevant insofar as someone or something other than God, that being creation, would be impacted by it, and my considered opinion is that the Seven Days aspect of Genesis 1 actually refers to Holy Week, with Christ recreating man on the sixth day on the Cross before resting in the tomb on the Seventh, before rising on both the first day of the next week and the mystical Eighth Day of Creation which is the World to Come (in observance of which being the reason why Orthodox Paschal liturgies happen at night). This interpretation is validated by Luke 24:25-49 affirming that the Law and Prophets, including all of Genesis, is about Christ.

And the fact remains, the Genesis 1 narrative is uniquely compatible with the discoveries of science in the way that other religions’ scriptural texts about creation are not, for example, the laughable creation myth in the Quran.

AV1611VET said:

Not exactly.

When Jesus said He was a door, I didn't say to myself, "He didn't really mean that."

That's because I know what He said, and what He meant as well.

It's a matter of Biblical maturity.

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Yes, the door analogy is always cited by Memorialists in this discussion, but it is not a compelling point, but a Red Herring or even an anachronistic misconception, since when Christ declares Himself to be a door (which did not necessarily mean the sophisticated hardware of doors of our time, but something rather more primitive, so one can read door as “entryway”, especially since Christ calls Himself the Way, the Truth and the Light, which is literally true in all three cases, and He is also literally the entrance to Salvation, even though He lacks hinges ), there is no other scripture where people are scandalized by it, since it was obvious what he meant. Whereas in John 6 people were scandalized by the suggestion of eating the Body and drinking the blood of Christ. And our Lord forced the disciples to accept things they were doubtful of or uncomfortable with on several occasions, for instance, when, in connection with the Last Supper, he demanded they allow Him to wash their feet.

I propose Christ is literally the door to salvation, but such a door does not require hinges, just as the bread and wine literally become His body and blood, but retain the perceptual attributes of bread and wine (usually, except in rare cases) for He is God and omnipotent and has infinite bread and wine, and by partaking of it we become what St. Peter in his epistle calls Partakers of the Divine Nature.