While perhaps it should come as no surprise to me, it is still difficult to understand why so many Christians today cannot even admit the possibility that the bread and wine of the Lord's supper are at the same time the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Their argument makes perfect sense of course, the bread does not look or taste like flesh. The wine (or grape juice) does not look or taste like blood. If one was to run a chemical test on them, they would show no traces of flesh or blood. The cannot be perceived as anything other than bread and wine.This of course is true. Even in the sacramental union, the bread and wine are not changed. They remain bread and wine. Paul refers to the consecrated bread and wine as bread and wine in his first letter to the Corinthians. Yet our blessed Lord himself calls them His own body and blood. Because we have no physical evidence for the elements to be anything other than bread and wine, it is logical to believe they are merely symbols of Jesus' body and blood.
Why then, is it difficult for me to understand why so many are unable to at admit the possibility of the Jesus' words meaning what they literally say? Because the same people who, when speaking of the Lord's Supper bind their faith to follow their reason, have no problem believing that Jesus Christ is true God and true man at the same time. Looking at Jesus, we see nothing but a poor man. Under the most rigorous of medical examination, no doctor would call him anything but a simple man. There is no evidence for Jesus being both true God and true man other than his word, holy scripture.
Although speaking of two different kinds of unions here (sacramental as opposed to personal) they describe very similar things. In both cases things appear to the wisdom of this world to be only one simply earthly thing. In both cases, to the wisdom of the Spirit and faith, the ordinary earthly things become supernatural, but no less real.
Why is one acceptable to some Christians, but not the other? I have no idea.
SOLI DEO GLORIA
5 comments:
Hi,
I'll take a stab at the question, as a refugee of the evangelical church.
It is so unbelievable because faith, in the evangelical church at least, is built on that which is experienced. You hear the message, you grant your approval to the facts of the Gospel, you want the material blessings of being a part of the family of God, and your experience governs your idea of faith.
Everything in this mode of doing church is seen, felt, and experienced with the senses. It's not logical for the Lord's Supper to be anything other than what it appears to be; a symbol of what Christ did on the cross, or a re-enactment of the events of that evening. There is no connection with the cross, other than a symbolic reminder, like a toast given in honor of the dead.
At least that is my impression. Like I said, I am a refugee, as I have left the Evangelical church behind. I find that after 20 years of being a Christian, I am suddenly in agreement with a lot of Lutheran teaching.
This subject however, is still a sticking point. Maybe you can offer some help.
Thanks for listening...
zr
Your comment is very telling actually. Especially the quote: "faith, in the evangelical church at least, is built on that which is experienced." This is certainly not a biblical definition of faith. Hebrews 11:1 makes this clear: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."
However, if accepted as a blanket statement of truth, no "evangelical" would be able to believe that Christ is true God and true man. There is no more experience to base one's faith on for this than there is for the Real Presence in the Holy Supper. There is no more logic that one can use to convince themself that Jesus is true God and true man. As far as I am concerned, the Bible is equally clear in stating both truths though. How is it that one is almost universally accepted, and the other is not?
Hi Ryan,
It occured to me that there is a disconnect between doctrine & practice that is most glaring in many evangelical churches.
If asked, I am sure that most evangelicals would agree with the Hebrews definition of faith and at the same time, in their practice, focus on only that which can be seen.
Having said that, I believe that there is also a fear of anything that resembles Roman Catholocism in the evangleical world (even tho the belief system has much in common with RCism) so any idea of a real presence = transubstantation in their mind, and that is bad.
It's interesting to talk with evangelicals and ask them what they believe. They often can tell you what they do NOT believe, but have a really hard time explaining what they DO believe.
I don't know if this helps or not.
zr
As another evangelical church refugee into Lutheranism...
If it's really Jesus's own body and blood, it's a miracle. Miracles aren't quite so welcome in today's Christian world now that the age of Rationalism has come and gone. The typical evangelical read about God's miracles from a distance and studies them to learn what sort of life-application lessons can be derived from them to make us more obedient and pleasing to God. The only miracles that happen today are the "Well, God ordained all these blessing that happened to me a long time ago, so it's just working out for me now" sort. The word is circumstantial.
When we talked about prayer, it was never really in terms of God actually *acting*-- that didn't square with our rational ideas of how God has already preordained every detail of the universe, so we treated prayer like it didn't really do anything except change our own perceptions.
When Christ ascended, it is thought that he went far away into heaven, and is sort of with us "in spirit" in some vague sense, perhaps through memories or our own emotional experiences at church-- but not in any *real*, objective sense. That sort of miraculousness is entirely too incredible!
Not to mention frightening, in a way. God is holy. If he is here in the midst of this joke of a Sunday service we've been having, we'd have to stop doing things our way and get really serious about what's actually going on. And that's boring. It's handier to focus on each other and consider God from a distance, pushing up our praise and compliments and works up to the throne, as if God is placated and pleasantly amused by this.
If this is Jesus's body and blood we're handling, things are going to look a LOT different. After all, all the churches with a strong understanding of the Real Presence have a really formal and alien aesthetic to their worship, and there's a reason for that.
I am not evangelistic nor do i go to an evangelist church. I do agree about the bread and wine being a symbolistic sort.
Yet, coming from a different denomintation, I read this and in a sence ya'll eventually resort back to God yet, all of your main theories are based off of your denomination. Such as saying well evangelist believe this or "might" believe this.
What is true to us is the bible... what its; morals and theories and stories interpret to us is what should be important only to us... not so much that we should start a group about it or denomination but have all of our individually own opinions
Denominations are merely like a language... from the begininng of time we have had all different types of language not mattering what it is... why those changed was to benifit us. The story of God of course its only logical we have so many different beliefs... imagined it being passed down from ancestor to ancestor how messed up or falsified it will come out in the end.
The only true evidence we have of anything resorting to God is the bible and the stories passed from generation to generation... although thats hard to explain to many non-believers
I think we should all not refer to our denominations but to the actual proof itself. I know this does not answer anything but the hole mistery about God i think was intentional. Mainly to do upon your faithfulness to him, or maybe it was one of those "telephone stories" that had been interpretted wrong to even the person writting the bible.
- Emily
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