Greetings_Puny_Humans responded to the doctrine of transubstantiation which, as defined by this article, is a false doctrine.
As I pointed out, the passages in 1 Corinthians regarding the Lord’s Supper demonstrate that the bread represents both the physical body of Christ and His death on the cross and also His spiritual body which is the church which is the people who have believed in Christ and have become His body by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
Neither the bread nor the believers who partake of it are physically incorruptible at this time. The physical body and blood of Christ are plainly taught by scriptures to be incorruptible.
Incorruptible things cannot be made corruptible, by definition. Therefore, it is impossible for a corruptible body to “consume” the incorruptible body and blood of Christ. On the other hand, our corruptible bodies can become incorruptible by being “swallowed up” so to speak. That is, our corruptible bodies can be consumed and will be subsumed in order to become incorruptible.
(Something that is incorruptible has no corruption or decay and can never have corruption. Something that is corruptible may not have corruption or decay but is capable of having corruption and decay. So an incorruptible thing can never become corrupted or corruptible. Otherwise it never was incorruptible. However, a corruptible thing can have corruption removed from it and a corruptible thing can potentially be made incorruptible so that the possibility of ever becoming corrupted ceases.)
If you read about the Lord’s supper and Lord’s table as described in 1 Corinthians 10 and 11, you must read them in context of the whole letter Paul wrote in order to see the true meaning of “discerning the body of Christ”. The false doctrine of transubstantiation is propagated by those who fail to discern the true body of Christ. The body of Christ and the bread are the people who have believed in Christ.
1 Corinthians 10:16-17
The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread.
We, that is those who believe, are that bread.
The bread and grape juice or wine used in communion will spoil, will decay, will become corrupted (in fact wine is already fermented which is a type of corruption) even if blessed and consecrated, I assure you. A person who partakes of these will still eventually die and his or her body will rot in the ground like everyone else, I assure you. If the bread and cup were to be “transubstantiated” into the physical body of Christ (which is incorruptible), then those who partake would never die and decompose in the ground... but they do. And that is because the bread and cup only become part of the spiritual body of Christ when believers eat and drink them and only as much as any food and drink is consumed by a believer can essentially become part of the physical tissues of their bodily organs. And as such they do, in a certain sense, become the body of Christ. But this is His spiritual body, the church, rather than the body of His flesh.
John 6:48-50
I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die.
If bread literally becomes Christ’s physical body, then those who partake would literally, physically never die. But many generations have partaken of the Lord’s supper and did die physically. But Jesus was speaking spiritually.
John 6:35
And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.”
If the bread literally became Christ’s physical body, then those who partake of it would never become literally, physically hungry ever again. But they do because Jesus was not speaking of physical things but spiritual.
John 6:53
Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.”
If the bread literally became Christ’s physical body, then those who have never eaten the bread have never been literally, physically alive. But they are because Jesus was not speaking of physical things but spiritual.
John 6:63
It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.
An excellent, wonderful post!
Very good expository.
How dare you not take that as literally physically! After all, doesn't John and the rest of Scripture teach spiritual life and eternal life is gained by physically ingesting human flesh? Why should we be different from pagans?
Endocannibalism is most often an expression of veneration of the dead, or the pursuit of consuming some esoteric aspect of the person, like the deceased's wisdom.
The Fore peoples of Papua New Guinea had a strongly codified type of endocannibalism as part of funerary rites. In this tribe, women and children played the largest role in cannibalism among deceased Fore males. - http://people.howstuffworks.com/cannibalism2.htm
Alpers and Lindenbaum's research conclusively demonstrated that kuru [neurological disorder] spread easily and rapidly in the Fore people due to their endocannibalistic funeral practices, in which relatives consumed the bodies of the deceased to return the "life force" of the deceased to the hamlet, a Fore societal subunit. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_%28disease%29#Transmission