"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, and I will raise him up on the last day. 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. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feed on this bread will live forever." Matthew 6:53-58
mmk- transubstantiation means that you believe that the elements of communion become real flesh, substance. and that Christ in Spirit enters into your physical being through that.
consubstantiation means that you believe it becomes real flesh in your soul, in Spirit, not substance. That He enters into your being in soul and spirit. It's like you're eating His flesh in your soul.
Free Methodist doctrine believes in communion as a rememberance so that we don't forget what He did for us. That we remember and take it all to heart. But most of the Free Meth.s I've talked to explain their beliefs as alike to consubstantiation...... and that's what I've always believed true to this point.
All of them know that it must be believed, understood, revered and cherished in the heart and held sacred in what Christ did for us.
(talking hypothetically here) If it were real flesh what would that mean to those of us who haven't thought of it as such? Or if it were real in our souls, what would it mean to those who believe it's substance, or that believe it's to remind us? How would that change our belief or how we think of communion? How would it change us? It's an awesome thought for Christ to indwell us through physically consuming His flesh.... but does He not already live there? He's already in our hearts and working through us, through our physical lives if we give them to Him.
Do we want to know? He's working through us where He's called us... why change that? but then, what if there's more, what if there is a fullness of His spirit's indwelling we haven't yet known so we haven't missed? do we want to find it? That's a personal question that requires tons of prayer and thought, so I don't ask that you answer it to me.
Reading the above passage makes a person wonder tho..... so feel free to message or comment me with your thoughts =) I'd love to hear what others think on all of it. What's comes to mind? What do you believe and what do you base that on?
Just thought it could make for a thought-provoking discussion ;-) Don't worry- you won't be 'attacked' for any belief on the subject. It's sort of a poll... but with room for explaination :-)
4 comments:
Evangelicalism - "This bread represents my body."
Consubstantiation - "This bread contains my body."
Transubstantiation - "This bread is my body."
I have gone over these different positions in my years of college studies. Then I made the following observation: The Lord’s Supper was instituted by God: by Christ while He was here on earth. What ever occurs or doesn’t occur during the Lord’s Supper was intended to be a teaching believed by ALL Christian believers.
C. S. Lewis makes some interesting points, however in his books (he was a firm believer in transubstantiation) and he goes so far as to explain how this idea works. Lewis explains the transubstantiation of elements in a metaphor he uses in Voyage of the Dawn Treader. In it, the children meet a star who looks like an old man. The skeptical child explains that the old man cannot be a star because they are gases.The star explains that Narnian reality is different but even in our reality, stars are not just exploding gases. Gases are merely the elements of which the stars are made.
Protestantism is at its very core a child of Rationalism. The modern Protestant asks, "How could Christ have held his own body in his hands at the Last Supper?"
The ancient church and ECFs wrote that this was impossible to understand rationally but that it was nonetheless true. It was a mystery and they gloried in the impossibility of it all; that, like the feeding of 5000, the impossible is no problem for God.
The Roman Catholic Church displays its error filled teaching by taking the words of Jesus literally in John 6. From the very beginning God commanded mankind to abstain from blood (Genesis 9:4). Moses reiterated this command and later, the prophets said it was a sin to consume blood (Leviticus 17:10-14; 1 Samuel 14:34). Clearly Jesus would not have taught the Jews to sin and disobey the Mosaic Law by drinking blood. Don't listen to their lies.
Actually, Poster #3, you may have just proved that Jesus was NOT figurative in what He said, by relating a profound verse!
"Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood." (Gen. 9:4)
When Jesus says "my words are spirit and life" He means it has His words spirit AND body!!
The problem with your interpretation is that the old Covenant is fulfilled in the new. If we went with the way you choose to interpret this, Peter and Paul are wrong ALSO about eating unclean animals- something forbidden under the old covenant, but okay under the new.
I also purpose this verse as a problem for many who try to interpret Holy Communion as only a rememberance:
"On that day...all who come to sacrifice will take some of the pots and cook in them." (Zech. 20-21)
Why is this verse a problem? Because almost ALL Scripture scholars agree that this whole passage referrs to Christ's kingdom.
IF Jesus' sacrifice is not only complete, but FINAL, why will there be sacrifices needed in Jerusalem after the death and resurrection of Jesus?
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