Eucharist/Lord's Supper Perspectives

[Rainbow Mage]

What should we think or perceive about this age old ritual instituted by Jesus in his last hours on earth? What is the Eucharist? A sacrament? The literal body and blood of Jesus? Just a symbol? You decide.

A personal Gnostic perspective- The Eucharist is both a sacrament and a symbol.

It's a symbol in that by it Jesus offered his followers a center point to focus on, in which to unite their hearts and minds with the mystic Christ (Christ-consciousness). One can visualize being one with the mystic one through the symbolism.

I don't think it literally transforms into human flesh and blood (transubstantiation), but that it isn't literal flesh and blood, but the mystic Christ one receives and joins themselves to.

It's a sacrament for the above mentioned reason of being a symbol. A sacrament is an outward sign of an inward grace.

So what are everyone else's thoughts?

 

[Jordan St. Francis]

A sacrament is not opposed to being a symbol, by the way. A sacrament is defined as a sign that causes the very thing it signifies. Thus the Sacrament remains a "sign" while communicating to us the very reality of His Body and Blood.

It is worth noting that we do not believe that we are "chewing off" a piece of Jesus, so to speak, but rather that we are, through the veil of the signs of bread and wine, becoming partakers in the whole Christ, who is incarnate flesh and blood and just not mere spirit.

 

[Rainbow Mage]

Yes Jordan I think that's what always seperated Gnostic and Orthodox thought of the Eucharist. Orthodox believe they're literally joined to the physical body of Jesus as well. Gnostics tend to see the physical world as illusionary, almost unreal.

 

[Katzpur]

We Latter-day Saints see it as purely symbolic of Christ's body and blood, and believe that when we take what we call "the Sacrament" (essentially the same idea as the Eucharist) we are doing so "in remembrance" of Christ's suffering, while at the same time renewing our baptismal covenants.

 

[Jordan St. Francis]

Good to see a familiar face- well, avatar, Katzpur. It's been a while!

 

[Katzpur]

Good to see a familiar face- well, avatar, Katzpur. It's been a while!

Well, I wasn't the one who went AWOL! You were! It's great to see you again, Jordan! :yes:

 

[Katzpur]

Somebody has to explain the difference between transubstantiation and real presence to me. It's something I've never understood.

 

[Rainbow Mage]

Somebody has to explain the difference between transubstantiation and real presence to me. It's something I've never understood.

Transubstantiation teaches that the bread and wine literally transform into the literal physical body and blood of Jesus. Real presence teach it's the body and blood, but don't define it. It's left a mystery. It isn't said to transform, or isn't clarified rather it's literal or spiritual. Real presence is what I ascribe to with a Gnostic twist.

 

[Mister Emu]

The real presence is the idea that in the Eucharist the actual body and blood of Jesus are present.

Transubstantiation is a specific understanding of what happens with the real presence. That the substance changes to become the real body and blood of Christ, while the accidents remain the same... That is the bread and wine are no longer bread and wine, they only look, feel, taste, etc. like it.

 

[Katzpur]

The real presence is the idea that in the Eucharist the actual body and blood of Jesus are present.

Transubstantiation is a specific understanding of what happens with the real presence. That the substance changes to become the real body and blood of Christ, while the accidents remain the same... That is the bread and wine are no longer bread and wine, they only look, feel, taste, etc. like it.

Okay, wait... I'm lost. In both cases, the belief is that the bread and wine are the actual body and blood of Christ, right? Let's get that much out of the way to start with.

Also, I don't know what you mean by "the accidents" as opposed to "the substance."

Don't worry about starting at the Kindergarten level. I won't be offended.

 

[Jordan St. Francis]

The Orthodox Church, for example, subscribes to what is called "the Real Presence", meaning they don't believe the Eucharist is merely spiritual or merely symbolic, though they reject the Roman definition of transubstantiation mainly because they are very uncomfortable with scholastic definitions being made dogma.

From a Roman perspective, the Orthodox and Catholic Church do not disagree on what is fundamentally happening in the Eucharist, though.

 

[Katzpur]

I am so confused!

 

[uu_sage]

As a Christian Universalist, I believe that all living beings are God's children created in the divine image and we are called to be stewards of the Lord's good creation. Since all souls, Christian or not, are headed for salvation, and since all are held in God's extravagant love and grace, all are welcome at Christ's table. This is not a Protestant table nor a Catholic table but this is God's table. People are free to interpret the wine and the bread in light of their experience and to develop their understandings of what communion means to them. Communion gives us as disciples of Jesus food for the journey of life and responding to the call of God for justice, liberation, inclusion and transformation. The kingdom of God, Jesus said, is present in our midst. We are co-creators with God in transforming the human race into the human family. As one famous soul, "Christ has no body but ours, and has no hands but ours". In my view I could say that Communion are symbols that point us to the mystery of God and the ways of God revealed in Jesus. Communion for me are symbols and yet I can affirm real presence.

 

[Rainbow Mage]

Katz let me explain it better I guess. Real presence believes that the body and blood of Christ is conveyed through hosts of bread and wine. Transubstantiation defines it by saying the hosts literally transform. Real presence leaves it a mystery, but says it is a spiritual pertaking in the body of the Lord. Hence the Orthodox also call it the "Mystic Supper".

 

[Jordan St. Francis]

Not quite, P2BG.

Catholics and the Orthodox do not fundamentally disagree on the nature of the event. The Orthodox simply reject the Roman attempt to both explain and dogmatize our explanation (which we've done through historically conditioned Aristotelian categories).

The Orthodox too believe that they are partaking in the Incarnate Christ- the Eucharist is His Flesh and Blood, and they would reject attempts to call it a mere spiritual partaking, as would both Gnostics and many Protestants. Therefore, they are at odds with the Protestant churches who explicitly define the Eucharist (against the Roman doctrine) as only a spiritual partaking in the Lord's Body.

Basically, the Orthodox don't want to commit themselves to the language of accident and substance- the very language which Katzpur finds so perplexing (understandably!). For that reason, I am inclined to agree with the Orthodox, though I affirm transubstantiation in this qualified sense.

Philosophically, God knows what I am! But I believe the Risen Christ is the real "substance" of the Eucharist, which appears as bread and wine. The Roman definition was hammered out in the midst of a series of Medieval controversies over the nature of the Eucharist (the East was by and large spared this, and is marked by its own particular history). Thus, the Roman Church found it necessary to underscore, defend, and therefore define its theology of the Eucharist. This has been simultaneously useful and problematic.

The problem is that this very definition, for being more precise than tradition tends to warrant, later produced a reactionary and arguably modern backlash that eventually ended in the total absence of the Eucharistic life in many Protestant communities.

This, in my opinion, is the bane of the Roman Communion. It has never shied from involvement in the intellectual trends of the day, it has been quite willing to engage the world on its own intellectual terms: such an attitude produced scholasticism, for example. This extends to even the modern world which, though its popes resisted it so famously, has nonetheless quite thoroughly compromised the ethos of the Catholic Church in its global scope.

Again, this is, at once, both a blessing and a grave threat to the integrity and substance of the tradition. To take a personal example, I am personally quite alienated by the changes made to the Roman Mass since Vatican II to make it more "comprehensible" and "up to date", even though I was raised in the new Mass.

 

[Mister Emu]

Okay, wait... I'm lost. In both cases, the belief is that the bread and wine are the actual body and blood of Christ, right? Let's get that much out of the way to start with.

Sorry.

The Real Presence is the idea that the body and blood of Jesus are actually present in the bread and wine. Yes.

Transubstantiation is a subset of Real Presence, it is a theory on what exactly happens during the Real Presence.

Also, I don't know what you mean by "the accidents" as opposed to "the substance."

Don't worry about starting at the Kindergarten level. I won't be offended.

The accidents are the properties of an object that do not affect its essence. Bread can be made from wheat, rye, barley or another grain. A particular loaf of bread being wheat is an accidental property, bread is bread regardless of it being wheat or not. That is what an accident is, a non-intrinsic/necessary property.

The Substance is the essence of a thing, a table can be made of wood, or metal, or glass, or plastic... Altering the material does not change the essence of what it is to be a table though.

To say the bread and wine change substantially to the body and blood of Christ, but retain the accidents is to say it looks, feels, smells, tastes, etc. like bread and wine, but it is essentially different.

edit: Of course, this is my limited understanding.

 

[Katzpur]

Thank you, Mister Emu. That helps, although it still seems to me to be unnecessarily complicated. In Luke 22:19-20, we read:

"And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me. Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you."

Were the Apostles eating Jesus' body and drinking His blood before He had even died? It seems to me that Jesus was clearly speaking metaphorically, saying that the bread was His body and the wine was His blood.

 

[Mister Emu]

It seems to me that Jesus was clearly speaking metaphorically, saying that the bread was His body and the wine was His blood.

We look at John 6:50-66 to clarify.

I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.

The listeners, fairly as one would suspect, are skeptical of this:

The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us [his] flesh to eat?

Jesus responded with:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.

Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life

For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.

He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him

he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.

Many of the disciples of Jesus balked at this teaching and ultimately left.

Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard [this], said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it?

From that [time] many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.

We see from this passage that Jesus had at least two times He could have explained that it was metaphor and not a literal eating of flesh and drinking of blood. He told the Jews who questioned that truly you had to eat of His flesh and drink of His blood, and He let many disciples leave over what would have been a misunderstanding.

 

[Ortho]

It does NOT seem to me to be metaphoric! First because in the other place Jesus says : Who does not eat my flesh and does not drink my blood will not enter the Kindom - too much for merely a symbol! Secondly if you ever had a real Eucharist, you would know that it is real body and blood, my soul knows and thirsts for God even more.

 

[Desert Snake]

What should we think or perceive about this age old ritual instituted by Jesus in his last hours on earth? What is the Eucharist? A sacrament? The literal body and blood of Jesus? Just a symbol? You decide.

A personal Gnostic perspective- The Eucharist is both a sacrament and a symbol.

It's a symbol in that by it Jesus offered his followers a center point to focus on, in which to unite their hearts and minds with the mystic Christ (Christ-consciousness). One can visualize being one with the mystic one through the symbolism.

That's not likely. you have conflated the eucharist with a concept that isn't even supported by any Xian tradition, or Scripture.

I don't think it literally transforms into human flesh and blood (transubstantiation), but that it isn't literal flesh and blood, but the mystic Christ one receives and joins themselves to.

It's a sacrament for the above mentioned reason of being a symbol. A sacrament is an outward sign of an inward grace.

No it isn't. That's like saying the baptism 'necessarily' means the person is baptized via Christ, of course that isn't the case.

So what are everyone else's thoughts?

I think your theories need some work.