From: ricko@ee.uts.edu.au (Rick Jelliffe)
Newsgroups: aus.religion
Subject: Re: AIDS and the common cup
Date: 29 Aug 92 08:09:00 GMT
Distribution: aus
Organization: University of Technology, Sydney, Australia

greyham@research.canon.oz.au (Graham Stoney) writes:

>ricko@ee.uts.edu.au (Rick Jelliffe) writes:
>>greyham@research.canon.oz.au (Graham Stoney) writes:
>>>Do you know if there's any biblical basis for this strange metamorphism?.

Jesus said (John 6:56) "My flesh is real food, my blood is real drink".

Is there any way of saying it plainer? He could have just stopped at
verse 52 ("What is this bread which I am to give? It is my flesh, given for
the life of the world"), and we could legitimately just hold him to
be using a figure of speech. But he goes further: not only is he 
living manna in some metaphical sense, but he says his flesh is actually food
and and his blood is actually drink, which he says we must actually
eat and drink. 

This was so offensive to some that they left: they understood he was
speaking literally in some way. Now elsewhere in the Gospels
Jesus doesn't attempt to confuse people with language: he uses parables
to provide vivid images that people will ponder, and often he will 
immediately explain in dialog what he means (e.g. Nicodemus in John 3:3
misunderstanding a man re-entering his mother's womb) when he has
caused confusion. Jesus was not trying to confuse people, and he wouldn't
deliberately do so by speaking figuratively in a way people obviously
would misconstrue as literally.

And also, in 1 Cor 11:29, Paul says that some people are "eating and drinking
damnation to (them)selves for not recognising the Lord's body for what
it is". He even says some people are sick and have died because of it.
Now, if its just a symbol, why would eating and drinking it unworthily
be so serious? If it was just prayed-over bread, what would be the
problem: David and his men ate the temple bread out of hunger and that
was alright. But 1 Cor 10:16 "Is not the bread we break a participation 
in Christ's body?".

That is transsubstantiation: that the bread participates (though how is
of course a mystery) in Christ's body. 

>>Jesus said very clearly "This is my body... this is my blood...".

>Well, to start with he didn't say it in English, so I don't see that it's so
>clear at all. 

It is clear enough that no Christians disputed it for the first 1500
years of Christianity (except for Berengarius d. 1088 for a few years).
Irenaeus (c.110AD) explicitly mentions it. (Pope St Clement of about 
100AD does mention some who don't believe, but because they don't beleive in 
prayer either it is doubtful they were Christians.) Were Jesus and the Apostles
so hopeless as teachers that no trace at all of interpreting it figeratively 
can be found? Or is the literal meaning the one he successfully taught!
Even Luther believed in the Real Presence (though in "consubstantiation"
not "transsubstantiation" for whatever that's worth).

Even for the last 500 years, most of Christianity have held the doctrine
of the Real Presence: that Jesus is actually in bread and wine. And
as far as English goes, those who spoke the same languages as the
Apostles, who were taught by them, they believed the literal interpretation.
Even today, those with languages closest to the bible ones, the Syriacs 
and the Greeks, hold to a literal interpretation.

>It sounds a lot more like a metaphor to me:

>met7a7phor \'met-e-,foG(e)r also -fer\ n
>1: a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of
>object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy
>between them (as in drowning in money)

The trouble is that both  to eat someone's flesh and to drink somone's
blood were already in use as metaphors in Jesus' time: meaning
to hate & persecute someone, and to severely punish someone, respectively.
That is how Jesus' imediate audience would have understood his words
figuratively. 

Also, his disciples were, before the coming of the Spirit, a little thick
with metaphors. In John 6:51 they get confused about the leaven of the 
Pharases, and he immediately stops their confusion. On the night he 
is giving his last will and testament as it were, and at the end of which
his disciples rejoiced because he was speaking plainly (John 16:29),
why would he resort to difficult metaphors? 

Metaphors are used to aid comprehension: the intent behind naming Peter 
the Rock is obvious, it was a figure of speech in use then, and is
still in use today. (Not to deny that 
Jesus was doing far more than granting a nickname as well.)

The vine and branches metaphor is very easy, but to vegetarianise
the Passover animal and use the props of the simultaneously-celebrated
Feast of Unleavened Bread instead is not an obvious step to make. As a 
metaphor, using bread hides any sacrifice aspects, which are supposed to be
the point. Eating bread is a very poor metaphor for sacrificially
and substitutionally dying: drinking wine is a poor metaphor for
shedding blood. (Of course the redness of the wine recalls blood, and the
brokenness of the bread hints at the brokenness of christ, and the fact
that they are food hints that we should take Christ into ourselves,
but they fail as metaphors: they do not "suggest a likeness or analogy"
with sacrifice in themselves in any obvious ways.)

>There was also no suggestion that we should expect the bread and wine to
>magically become his body or his blood when we take communion; the very
>thought of it is grotesque and the whole idea is totally at odds with the
>physical appearance of the bread and wine, which still look much like bread and
>wine.

No one claims the bread and wine undergo any physical change. That is
grotesque indeed. Since no-one proposes that, it can be ignored. 
The body of Jesus stands under the appearance of the bread and wine.

>>                             That the literal interpretation of his words 
>>is also reasonable (defineable within a rigourous logical system) is
>>the doctrine of transubstantiation, which explains it from within an
>>Aristotelean/ Thomistic system of substance and accidents. 

>Which sounds like inventing a complex theory to support a simple
>misinterpretation. Correcting the misinterpretation would be much easier.

You can't stop people from thinking and trying to understand truth.

>Christ's message is so simple; why do people need to complicate it?.

I'm not trying to be aggressive, but I should respond "Christ's words
are so simple; why do people need to ignore them?": My flesh is real food.

-ricko