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Salvation wrote:

“Just posting from the site. Are you saying that you don’t agree with the apologetics here?

They are definitely a Catholic viewpoint, so I might see that.”

Yes, I am saying that I don’t agree with them. The way this thread is presented is that John 6:25-69 is simply a long prooftext for the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. That is not a credible conclusion.

That it has something to say regarding how we are to understand the presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper I would not deny. But this is an inherently difficult text to press into use for such a purpose. On the one hand, somewhat in favor of your borrowed assertion, is that the Gospel according to St. John was written after the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke as well as Paul’s 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, and a considerable time after the earthly ministry of Christ. If the church had taken Jesus’ command to “do this in remembrance of Me” seriously, which would certainly have been true, then the Supper was being practiced regularly in the time John wrote his Gospel. It is in the background, but only in the background.

On the other hand, John is reporting on words of Jesus spoken many months before He instituted the Supper, as recorded by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. So, we can hardly assume that He was commenting directly and explicitly on something that He had not yet revealed, instituted, and commanded.

More profitable for both our understanding and our honoring of the Lord of the church would be to determine from the words John wrote what precisely was at issue between Jesus and those who were having such trouble grasping His teaching. I doubt the point at issue between Jesus and the people of the Sea of Galilee environs was the presence of Christ in the as yet unknown Lord’s Supper. Do you see my point? And it is one that has a lot to do with one’s hermeneutical principles, and thus in keeping with the thread’s stated purpose.