Posted on 10/12/2002 1:43:32 PM PDT by fortheDeclaration
The Presence of Christ at the Lord's Supper Is Christ really, truly, personally present with us in the sacrament? Do we therein covenant and commune with him in person, touch to touch, immediately and really; or is this only a show, a symbol of something absent and different from what it seems?
The gross perversions of the Romanists and Ritualists, who have made it altogether a question of the local presence of Christ's flesh and blood, have occasioned much confusion of thought and many prejudices on the subject. Nevertheless, as a matter of fact, every believer knows that Christ is present in the sacrament - that he has, as a matter of fact, experienced his presence. If he is not present really and truly, then the sacrament can have no interest or real value to us. It does not do to say that this presence is only spiritual, because that phrase is ambiguous. If it means that the presence of Christ is not something objective to us, but simply a mental apprehension or idea of him subjectively present to our consciousness, then the phrase is false. Christ as an objective fact is as really present and active in the sacrament as are the bread and wine, or the minister or our fellow-communicants by our side. If it means that Christ is present only as he is represented by the Holy Ghost, it is not wholly true, because Christ is one person and the Holy Ghost another, and it is Christ who is personally present. The Holy Ghost doubtless is coactive in that presence and in all Christ's mediatorial work, but this leads into depths beyond our possible understanding. It does not do to say that the divinity of Christ is present while his humanity is absent, because it is the entire indivisible divine-human Person of Christ which is present.
When Christ promises to his disciples, "LO, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world-age," and, "Where two or three are met together in my name, there am I in the midst of them," he means, of course, that he, the Godman Mediator they loved, trusted, and obeyed, would be with them. His humanity is just as essential as his divinity, otherwise his incarnation would not have been a necessity. His sympathy, his love, his special helpful tenderness are human. He is able to be our perfect High Priest, "being touched with the feeling of our infirmities," because he "was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin" (Heb. 4:15).
But what do we mean by "presence" ? It is a great mistake to confuse the idea of "presence" with that of nearness in space. This may be a condition of presence, or it may not, but it is never "presence" itself. If you walk abroad at noonday in the tropics, the most overwhelmingly present thing to you in the universe is the intolerable sun, although it is ninety-three millions of miles distance. If another person is only one foot distant, but separated from you by a wall which cuts off sight and sound, he is as absent as if in the center of a distant star. But if the same person, a hundred feet from you in an audience-room, sees you face to face, and hears every vibration of your voice, he is as truly present as if he touched you at every point. When Whitefield's preaching was fully heard and its power felt across the Delaware River, he was present really and truly wherever was heard and his matchless eloquence felt. "Presence," therefore, is not a question of space; it is a relation. Personal presence is such a relation of persons that they are conscious of each other as immediate objects of perception and sources of influence. We know nothing as to the ultimate nature of the union our souls and bodies, yet we are no less certain of the fact. So we need not speculate how it is that Christ, the whole God-man, body, soul, and divinity, is present in the sacrament, but we are absolutely certain of the fact. He has promised it. We have hundreds of times experienced it. We can neither see his face, nor hear his voice with our bodily senses; nevertheless, when we exercise faith, he, the whole Christ, speaks to us, and we hear him; we speak to him, and he hears us; he takes all we give him, he gives us and we receive all of himself. This is real, because he is present. And this is not confined to the sacrament. He makes manifest to our faith the reality of his presence with us, and communicates the same grace to us, on many other occasions and at other times, here and now and in this breaking of bread we have a personal appointment to meet our Lord. And he never disappoints those who thus seek him with faith and love.
` A.A. Hodge
The doctrine of transubstantiation was formulated after the Great Schism took place, and the Eastern church has never formally affirmed or denied it, preferring to state simply that it is a mystery and sacrament.
Most Calvinists would also call it a mystery...
The EO is not a branch of Rome..they have their own way of looking at communion and it is not Roman
You cannot understand my faith from the outside or from anything written here on FR or anywhere else anyway. There are components of it which cannot be understood by most outside the church.
We are an experiential body of Christians. True knowledge is acquired by experience. Your church is about this world, ours is about the next, and about the inner life.
Eastern Christianity is communal, holistic, experiential, intuitive, meditative, hesychastic, and about gaining spiritual maturity and discipline through the ascetic lifestyle.
I simply cannot believe you have not rebuked Woodkirk. And even worse, you continue down this path!
I'm greatly disappointed in you.
I can only post something that might give you an idea just how offensive this behavior truly is to us, by the emotions it may stir in you:
Contrarily, I would passionately urge Mr. Coston to read King James & Letters of Homoerotic Desire by David M. Bergerson. Mr. Bergerson not only presents facts of King James's effeminate, if not, homosexual tendencies, but of his erotic interests as well. Bergerson's exploration of letters between King James and three of his favorites reveals an intimate world of collaborative homoerotic and sexual desire. These primary source letters which were newly collected involve correspondence between James and George Villiers, duke of Buckingham, passionate, touching, amazing missives that will remove any doubt about James's sexual preferences. His other two favorites were Esme Stuart (Lennox) and Robert Carr (Somersett). Bergerson grounds his provocative study on an examination of the tradition of letter writing during the Renaissance and draws a connection between homosexual desire and letter writing that historical period. James's letters to his favorites were saturated with same sex innuendo and proposals of marriage--especially to Buckingham.
The evidence clearly demonstrates that the king was most definitely homosexually inclined.
History also records with ample documentation that James was indeed a sadist as many royal personages were during that era.
He enjoyed torturing people. When he was the King of Scotland in 1591,he personally supervised the torture of people allegedly involved in witchcraft. He would often suggest new tortures to the examiners.
One woman, named, Barbara Napier, was acquitted for practicing witchcraft. This acquittal so angered James that he wrote a personal letter to the court on May 10,1551,ordering a sentence of death, and he had the jury called into custody. To make sure the jury understood his anger about the acquittal and the severity of the offense, he presided at the new hearing, and released them without punishment when they reversed their verdict.
History also records that James was cowardly; on January 7,1591,he was in Edinburgh. An entourage followed that included the Duke of Lennox and Lord Hume. They had an argument with the laird of Logie and subsequently pulled their swords. James looked behind, saw the flashing steel, and fled into the nearest refuge which turned out to be a skinners booth. There to his shame, he fouled his breeches in fear.
In conclusion, King James was a complex, enigmatic, dastardly individual. However, his major contribution to Christian history was his opposition to Roman authority (The Pope).
It was James's opinion that only the authority of a king, backed by the unified support of fellow Protestant princes, could realistically challenge the usurped authority of the Pope.
Therefore, his version of the Bible was, as stated above, a political document designed by way of revised translations to ensure that the king's reign could not be challenged by Rome or the common people.
I implore the reader to study Wide as the Waters The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution It Inspired, by Benson Bobrick to get a complete understanding of how various verses in the King James Bible were changed or deleted from the original texts.
Another book of note worth about King James and the Bible is In The Beginning The Story of the King James Bible and How It Changed A Nation, A Language and A Culture, by Alister McGrath.
After reading and studying the aforementioned sources, if people still want and need to believe that the King James Version of the Bible is the Word of God, then the history and research pertaining to this subject is moot at best and will subsequently go for naught.
*****
Please note: I would never post an article such as this in debate here, regardless of whether I thought it was true (I do not, but I have to study this further.)
Why?
Because it is such an affront, scandal, and insult to my non-Catholic brethren.
i.e., it would be sinful to bait them in such fashion, even if I felt it served my purposes.
yet you are signing on to something even more hateful and hurtful, purposely wounding fellow Christians, by not only refusing to denounce Woodkirk, but by furthering his attack.
I'm really beginning to doubt the good will or charity of any of the non-Catholics debating Catholic doctrine here, and it has taken tremendous self control not to state what is on my mind, for such would get me banned.
Which in the end would probably be better than hanging around with the hateful, lying, bigoted anti-Catholics on these threads.
We are already extremely distant from all Latin teachings, though you, like most other FR RC, apparently choose to deny this or dismiss the differences as minor. As I have said before, delusion is a strong demon. Vainglory is another strong demon and I am aware that some EO here on FR prefer to be popular and well-liked, rather than tell the truth.
The Reader has tried to be truthful on many occasions and frequently finds a brick wall in front of him. It is simply unfathomable that you would find anything of like teaching between our churches.
We are eastern - your church has much more in common with the protestant churches than with ours, since you are both western. Our entire approach to Christianity is lacking in all of the western ideas your church espouses - legalism, rationalism, authority, structure, and above all the whore of modernism.
It is very difficult for RC to understand the way we function and in truth it took many years for me to grasp it, during years within the church. I have little hope that anyone here could grasp it from reading some posts.
You are concerned with intellectual authority, being correct, examining details, defining words, and labeling ideas (as simplistic), and others (Calvin as safely able to be discarded) - as if your opinion mattered one iota. LOL.
Everything about your post shrieks "western" to me.
And yet not one of these characteristics will lead you to God's inner peace or spiritual authenticity, as would the practises of piety, humility, love, and self-sacrifice.
And the words it is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing mean what?
Or maybe you just never read that far, once you read this is my body that was all you needed to read.
Why should context have anything to do with what a passage means-right?
Yes, they were clear and Christ said that worship was spiritual (Jn.4:24,Jn.6:63) not the physical eating of His flesh and blood in the appearance of a piece of bread.
You did not get that from Scripture, you got that from your Church who are using some scriptures to justify it.
Even Satan uses scripture (Lk 4:10)(incorrectly, ofcourse)
Yes, which is reality
You got me on that one. What do you mean?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.