Posted on 03/24/2006 6:06:40 AM PST by marshmallow
You ignored everything I wrote. Jn 6 has three indubitable indicators in the context that Jesus was understood by his hearers as meaning his words literally and he concurred with their having understood him as meaning it literally.
John 10 has no markers that indicate he intended it literally and plenty that he meant it literally.
If have no substantive response to my arguments, don't insult me with a response that ignores everything I wrote. You only reveal how bare your cupboard is. And I don't mean that literally. See if you can figure out what it means metaphorically.
And that is clearly incorrect.
Christ's onetime sacrifice for His sheep accomplished everything God intended it to accomplish -- to redeem the elect so that they would stand acquitted and blameless before God by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ who paid the penalty for every single one of their sins, once for all time.
We are specifically told not to crucify Him again...
"If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame." -- Hebrews 6:6
To rebuke transubstantiation is to cut out the middle man...as God wills.
"And it's easy to say that the Catholics should take the high road, but we did that for so long and it got worse and worse. "
Come on now. We have no shortage of threads posted by Catholics that say things like (I paraphrase), "Sola scriptura is for idiots", or "Why you need Mary saved" or other such things that are clearly provocative to Protestants.
"The same posters who would never think of going to a Jewish thread to blast their faith have no problem coming to a Catholic thread."
You must recognize that there is a difference between "blasting" someone and asking someone to provide a defense of their beliefs - though I do grant that there is a large degree of rudeness here on FR.
But Dr. E., isn’t this referring to someone who falls away from Faith or a backslider?
This is an issue that causes me much turmoil, because I was very attached to the Blessed Sacrament when I was still Catholic. I know you might not understand that, but it was my attachment to the Blessed Sacrament that pretty much kept me Catholic.
The main reason I left is because the Church demanded that I accept 3 doctrines, along with the Mystery of Faith, (that is, believing in the Incarnation, The Crucifixtion and The Resurrection) in order to be able to approach the Blessed Sacrament. As I couldn’t do that, and retain access to the Blessed Sacrament, the Church was no longer a hospitable place to be.
I wouldn’t have minded speculation on any of it, though speculation can be fraught with danger, and I can see why Calvin hated it. But it was the raising of these doctrines to parity with the Mystery of Faith, as it concerned my being in Communion with the Church, that caused me to collapse.
As I understand it, the Reformers were split on the interpretation of the Sacrament of Communion. Luther’s position was pretty close to that of the Catholic Church, he basically renounced the methodology of Transubstantiation, but believed in the actual Presence of our Lord in the Sacrament. In fact, he’s quoted as saying “better to drink blood with the Papists, than wine with the Zwinglians.”
Calvin, as I understand it, seemed to straddle the middle ground between Zwinglian’s pure symbolism and Luther’s Real Presence. And even in John Knox‘s Scottish Confession, he seems to anathematize those who would claim the Bread and Wine to be just symbols.
I know nothing of Transubstantiation, intellectually. Accidents and substances is a concept that I understand the language of , but that’s about it. I don’t know how anyone can know what occurs at the level the Mystery is supposed to occur at. It is a complete denuding of the Mystery in my view, and to what end I don’t know.
I'm still waiting for your counter-argument as to why they are dubitable. You have written two snoots in a row. I gave three reasons why Jn 6 is marked as literal. On which of them was I wrong?
To respond that it's merely my opinion, that they merely seem indubitable to me is a variant on the elementary school "so's your old man" argument, which is to say, no argument at all, merely childish name-calling. I called you no names. You called me snooty. Look in the mirror. I gave you reasons. You give none, nada.
I'll give you one more chance to come up with a real reason why the markers of literalness in Jn 6 are unreal and do not indicate that Jesus was understood by everyone to have meant his words literally. After that you can explain to me how everyone was mistaken for 1000 years after that.
And when you're finished with that, you can explain to me why, if for 1000 years everyone got it wrong, how anyone now can have a hope of getting it right.
But spare me your snooting. You're the one whose tone has been nothing but mocking.
When I used the word indubitable, I was not being snooty. If you believe my reasons to be dubitable, tell my why.
You have engaged enough threads on Catholic topics to know that Catholics do not claim that Christ is sacrificed over and over again. In a mystery that transcends time and space and brings heaven and earth together, we enter into the once for all sacrifice of Christ on the Cross.
That is the doctrine we teach. And you know it is. Your deliberate misrepresentation discredits you.
I'm not "discredited" by your confusing theology.
Is the actual blood and body of Christ offered anew at every mass for the remission of sins or not?
You are correct that Luther believed Christ truly, corporeally but not sense-perceptibly present but he also believed the bread remained truly, substantially present. How two substances can inhere under the same appearance is just as much a problem as how a different substance can exist under another appearance.
Substance and accidents are not essential to the Catholic teaching. Going all the way back to Ambrose and Augustine a distinction between the appearance and the reality (signum and res) was made, because it is required by the simple facts: if Jesus truly is present in reality (res) it is quite obvious to the eyes and touch and taste that the appearance remains bread appearance. Scripture and the unbroken interpretation of Scripture from the beginning tells us He is truly and really present; our eyes and hands and mouths tell us that the appearance is otherwise.
That's all the "substance and accidents" language means. One reality, another appearance, one reality, another sign. Luther believed in two realities and one sign. To me it doesn't fit as well with Scripture or the tradition as one reality and another, one, appearance.
But to reject transubstantiation because you think the words substance and accidents are trying for excessive clarification misses the point that no one who believes in Real Presence has a problem with "reality" and "appearance." Well, "substance" = "reality" and "accidents" = "appearance." Substance and accidents language merely says the same thing as reality/appearance language, which I assume you accept, says.
Zwingli denied any Christ-reality at all. For him all there was was bread reality and bread appearance from which spiritual meaning (symbolic Christ-meaning) arose. Calvin talked about "spiritual" presence as something less merely symbolic than Zwingli--and certainly many Calvinists have taken it that way but other Calvinists have taken it pretty Zwinglian. So Calvin's language seems to me to be not very helpful because it's too vague, something one can't say for Zwingli or Luther or Aquinas.
You asked: "Is the actual blood and body of Christ offered anew at every mass for the remission of sins or not?"
The once-for-all sacrifice is offered. It is re-presented, made present, brought home to those present but not repeated. "Anew" can mean just about anything under the sun. You used the term "repeated." That is explicitly denied by Catholic teaching. For you to represent it as Catholic teaching when you know better is dishonest.
Now you pull the word "anew" out of some Catholic text somewhere. Quote the entire context and we'll see how it is being used. What you will not find in Catholic teaching is any use of terms like "repeated."
When a married couple renews their vows, they state their love and pledge to each other anew. They renew. They repeat words. But they renew vows, love, commitment. They do not repeat vows, rather, by repeating words of vows they make anew, renew the reality of the vows. They re\-present, make present again the vow they made. Each honest act of their lives is a renewing, an anewing but not a repetition.
In the Eucharist we repeat Christ's words but we do not repeat his sacrifice. His Sacrifice is re-presented, made present by the power of the Holy Spirit because he promised to be with us to the end of time.
Christ's once-for-all sacrifice on the cross was a cosmic event. It drew into itself all of history before and all of history afterward. It cannot be chased into a single moment in time. Yet millions of people have lived and died in Christ, before and after the Cross. Those who lived and died in faith in Him, even the shadowy faith of the Old Covenant, experienced "anew" the power of the Cross. But the Cross was not repeated. It cannot be. It can, and must, however, be appropriated to each of use again and again.
In the Eucharist that sacrifice just plain IS, in all its timeless reality yet it IS also utterly real in each and every specific time and place that we do what Jesus commanded us to do in "anamnesis" of him.
The Passover event happened once in a specific time and place in Egypt. But whenever Jews celebrate the Passover, they speak in the present tense of it happening in the here and now yet obviously "back then."
All that the Catholic and Orthodox understanding of the Eucharist means is exzactly what Jews understood about God's actions in history: they happen in time yet God is beyond time and thus they are both at the same time.
In rejecting the doctrine of the Sacrifice of the Mass the reformers were turning their back on thousands of years of Jewish and Christian teaching, teaching found in the Book of Hebrews and elsewhere. They drove a wedge between "back then" and now that Catholics and Orthodox refuse to drive. They imprisoned the Sacrifice of the Cross into a tiny box called "back then." The Redeemer of the Cosmos's Sacrifice cannot be so imprisoned.
The Reformers were oh so very modern and so very different from the Old and New Testaments, so very unbiblical. Modern folk think things in the past are "back then" and only back then. This way of thinking is at most 500 years old. Ancient Jews and Christians all understood that time somehow participates in the timeless, if time results from the act of an eternal Creator.
But you can have your modernist cage for the Cross if you prefer. I'll take the ancient, original Christian understanding of it any day. The acts of the early Christian martyrs and of the early fathers are replete with statements that indicate that they had no doubt about this understanding of Christ's presence. I dare you to find any text from any Christian writer of the first millennium that erects a wall between "back then" and now when it comes to the Eucharist.
I always like saying that. 8~)
As the priest raises the Host, does it change?
And if so, when?
Yes, I can see where you seem to prefer the very ancient belief patterns.
I prefer those only 2,000 years old.
"Ah. And so, everything that was an "oral teaching" eventually was written in Scripture?"
Yes, I believe that everything essential to salvation was eventually reduced to writing.
What would be the standard of conduct today been if God had not seen fit to preserve His word in written form?
"2 Thessalonians 2:15 So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter.
Can I have an Amen to that?"
Absolutely. The fact that Peter's sermon on Penticost was not recorded until later took nothing away from the validity of it. All teaching in the church during its infancy was oral by men who had been endowed with the Holy Spirit. Once the essentials of salvation had been reduced to writing, some forty years later, and the message from God was available in written form, inspiration ceased as well as the oral teaching. Today we have the Bible and with it we have no need for futher oral teaching of God's word. Expounding on it, Yes; but adding to it, No.
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