Bread Worship

I hope this thread will cover the ancient practice and custom of worshipping Cookie god and the actual practice at the Masses which shows the Mass by video which doesn't commemorate the Blood shed and Death at the Cross, which never mention that the Sacrifice at the Cross all the Price for the sins of the world, the Eternal Redemption ONCE FOR ALL, but just repeating the human immitation of the sacrifice.

 

:sleeping_2:

 

Me too. :sleeping_2:

 

"Take note of those who hold heterodox opinions on the grace of Jesus Christ which has come to us, and see how contrary their opinions are to the mind of God. . . . They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which that Father, in his goodness, raised up again. They who deny the gift of God are perishing in their disputes." Written by Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of John the Apostle, 110 A.D.

 

Oh, how nice, as I roll my eyes. Another thread designed primarily to make false accusations and vent hateful feelings.

 

The Second Council of Nicaea should provide at least some of the context for this discussion. (It is interesting that the main iconoclast was more the Byzantine emperor than either the Pope, or the Patriarch of Constantinople.)

CA

 

Yep, that's about it.

Case closed.

Oh, and there's just that small part about "This is My Body, this is My Blood". Now who said that?

 

Well obviously he didn't mean that, Mat! I mean duh, aren't we humans smarter than a mere diety? :laugh:

When will people realize that Jesus generally meant what he said?

 

Yeah, so much that Jesus let many of His disciples leave and even offered His own inner circle of disciples the opportunity to leave town…

ICXC NIKA
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Newsflash: none of us are Catholic (eg: Agnus IIRC is an Orthodox catechumen, Chemnitz as the name suggests is Lutheran and I'm Anglican), so please drop the Mass-transubstantiation straw man. Of course if you analyse the bread and wine, they're still bread and wine. But Jesus is spiritually Really Present in them as His Body and Blood. Thus teach the Scriptures and thus has the Church always believed as Zenas' quote from Ignatius of Antioch confirms. Of course you are entitled to come up with your own novel interpretation of Scripture if you so wish, but frankly I'd rather rely on Ignatius', since he was discipled by John the Evangelist who wrote down Jesus' words in the Bread of Life Discourse in John 6:31-59 and is therefore far more qualified than you or me to say what those words really mean.

 

As a Lutheran, I believe that from the evidence drawn from the Gospel accounts and 1 Cor. 11 that the Body and Blood are mysteriously joined with the bread and wine within the context of the sacrament, given for the forgiveness of our sins.

I would like to see some proof that Jesus was speaking in parable during the Last Supper. If you are going to say it you have to prove it. So please, offer up your grammatical evidence.

 

"Do this in remembrance of me" is why Baptists call it a memorial meal.

Also, since the bread and wine at the Last Supper did not actually physically turn into Jesus blood and flesh, he had to be speaking metaphorically.

I would agree with you though, that Jesus is in some mysterious way present in the Lord's Supper. Not necessarily with the elements, but in the service.

 

Cowboymatt,

As a former Baptist who used to share your view of communion, please allow me to chime in:

From my understanding, the Greek word of "remembrance" is "anamnesis" which had a stronger connotation than a mere mental recollection. The term conveyed the idea of "making present" the reality remembered. Certainly mentally recalling Christ's sacrificial death is a crucial part of communion, but based on all the relevent Scriptures and the consistent testimony of the Church Fathers, that's not all that it is. So, yes, it is a "memorial meal" but it is also something more.

Not necessarily. Christ is still identifying the bread and wine with His body and blood--flesh and blood which He earlier had stated His disciples must eat and drink to abide in Him and have life, real flesh and blood which He was literally giving for the life of the world (John 6). Though the bread and wine didn't (don't) empirically turn into bread and wine, Christ can still really make the elements His body and blood in a sacramental (mysterious/supernatural) sense. And remember, neither "supernatural" nor "mysterious" is synonymous with "metaphorical". Therefore, it's not necessarily an "either/or" proposition. In other words, it's not either an empirical physical change or merely a metaphoric visual aid.

I believe a fair reading of Scriptures reveals that Christ's 'mysterious' presence iin the Lord's supper is intimately involved "with" the elements, particularly Paul's statement to the Corinthians:

"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?" (1 Cor 10:16)

Notice that grammatically Paul states that it's the bread that's the communion of (or participation in or sharing in) the body and the cup that's the participation in/sharing in the blood of Christ. In other words, our communion with Christ's body and blood are effected by the elements consumed--the bread and wine. For further proof of this notice verse 18:

"Observe Israel after the flesh: are not those who partake of the sacrifices partakers of the altar?" (1 Cor 10:18)

In the OT those who ate the sacrifices, ate the actual sacrifice not a disconnected visual aid that merely represented a previously given sacrifice. In including this statement Paul is making the comparison between the Old Covenant sacrifices and altar, which the New Covenant Sacrifice and Table. When we partake of the bread and wine of the Lord's Table we too are partaking of the Lord's Sacrifice as the bread and wine are the actual 'participation in' (comunion of/sharing in) Christ's body and blood respectively, and not merely disconnected visual aids of the same.

Similarly, in the OT Passover the Jews actually ate of the Passover lamb (not a mere representation of it), while in the NT we partake of the Passover Lamb who takes away the sins of the world when we partake of Holy Communion. Granted, we're not eating empirical flesh nor drinking empirical blood, but since the bread and wine is the communion of Christ's body and blood we are actually partaking of the Paschal Lamb just the same. Hope this helps.

 

Thanks for that post.

I don't think, though, that "remembrance" means "making present" unless you mean mentally, which is what recalling anything means. BDAG, the best lexicon of the NT, simply lists "reminder, remembrance of something" as glosses for anamesis. The Liddell-Scott-Jones lexicon (which is the main lexicon for classical Greek literature) simply lists "calling to mind, reminiscence, recall something to memory, and memorial sacrifice." ("Memorial sacrifice" is interesting isn't it!?) Interestingly, the Septuagint, an ancient translation of the OT in Greek, has the word a few times. The most appropriate example for this discussion is in Leviticus 24.7 "Along each row put some pure incense as a memorial portion to represent the bread and to be an offering made to the LORD by fire." So it seems that the idea of "remembrance" was already in the religious/sacrificial vocabulary but that it involved calling something to mind.

I don't mean to imply, however, that the Lord's Supper is a "mere symbol," as many of my fellow-ordained Baptists do. I think that using the word "mere" is polemical against other Christians, something that should not be a part of Christian worship. Instead, I believe that there is a heightened spiritual reality which surrounds the Lord's Supper. I have experienced this in my life and the seriousness with which Paul deals with the subject in 1 Cor 11 indicates that he experienced it too.

With regard to 1 Cor 10.16, sharing in the blood and body of Christ is metaphorical since we aren't actually drinking blood and eating flesh. Calling it a metaphor or a symbol is not demeaning or belittling in my eyes. In fact, metaphors can be have a huge impact on us.

Eva Feder Kittay, in Metaphor: Its Cognitive and Linguistic Structure, argues that metaphors have the power to (metaphorically speaking!) rearrange the furniture of the mind (316-324). Further, another metaphor theorist says something about metaphors which we might find helpful -- Wayne Booth, in "Metaphor as Rhetoric: The Problem of Evaluation," in On Metaphor, says that "to understand a metaphor is by its very nature to decide whether to join the metaphorist or reject him, and that is simultaneously to decide to either be shaped in the shape [the] metaphor requires or to resist" (63). One more scholar will be instructive: Ted Cohen, in "Metaphor and the Cultivation of Intimacy," also in On Metaphor, says that when an author uses a metaphor he or she is inviting the reader into a certain level of intimacy with him or her (1-10). Couldn't these understandings of metaphor help us understand the importance, transformative power, and intimacy building realities of the Lord's Supper? I think so. So whenever I say "metaphor" I am not denigrating the Lord's Supper at all!

In other words, the Lord's Supper is special, holy, and transformational.

 

I would read anamnesis as more than simply 'bringing to mind', 'commemoration' or 'remembering' as we use the term now. For instance, I could commemorate D-Day by having a two-minutes silence on June 6th next. Or I could visit Omaha beach and watch a showing of Saving Private Ryan there plus talk to some vets there on June 6th next. The latter is more akin conceptually to anamnesis than the former.

 

Cowboymatt,

Thanks for your reply. I do by the way think "anamnesis" as "memorial sacrifice" is pretty interesting :smilewinkgrin: In fact I'd say that whenever we partake of Holy communion "in memory of Him" we are partaking in that same Sacrifice that Christ made once for all on Calvary. (I do like Matt Black's illustration of anamnesis--it seems to be similar to how the Hebrews spoke of the Passover during their yearly observances--ie as taking place in the present tense)

And I can appreciate you comments about not thinking that the Lord Supper is "mere" anything. It was just my experience as a Baptist to hear the preachers go out of their way in saying that "it's only a symbol" and that "nothing mystical takes place". Seems like you've had similar experiences.

I do want to comment on this...

Well, I guess I'm quibbling about the meaning of the word "metaphor". On debating this topic with many others, folks have invariably used "metaphor" and "symbol" as words which convey the idea of a visual aid that's disconnected from the reality they signify. If I'm not mistaken, the classic usage of "symbol" actually meant the "bringing together" the sign which signifies and the reality signified (perhaps I was thinking more of this in my comment about "anamnesis"). That's why certain Church Fathers could use the word "symbol" at times in describing the Eucharist, while at other times using language that demonstrated a real substantial identification of the bread and wine with the body and blood. That's why I too can say that the bread and wine are "symbols" (in this classic sense) of the body and blood of Christ, for when I physically partake of these "symbols" I'm also supernaturally partaking of the reality they signify--the body and blood of our Lord.

Returning to 1 Corinthians 10, I'd say that when we eat the bread and drink the wine we are actually eating and drinking the Body and Blood of Christ as the bread and wine are the actual participation in the Body and Blood of Christ respectively, as we are indeed partakers of the New Testament altar/Sacrifice at the Table (just as the Jews had eaten of the actual OT sacrifices from the OT altars and not "metaphors" for the same). So although we aren't eating and drinking empirical flesh and blood, we are eating and drinking what has become sacramentally (supernaturally) His Body and blood by virtue of the fact that, by the Words of Christ and power of the Holy Spirit, the bread is the sharing in the Body of Christ, and the cup is the sharing in the Blood of Christ.

But at this point, we may agree to disagree....

 

Great post!

I would be able to accept your ideas if I was pressed to (like if a NT job opened up in a Lutheran seminary in 3 or 4 years!).

 

Matt,

Zenus quoted...

And you said...

Thats about it? Case closed? Could you share with us all the book, chapter and verse of that statement that "closes" the "case"?

Oh. It isint scripture? Looks like the case isnt closed after all.

You then said...

Jesus Christ did. The same Jesus who said that he was the "door".

Jesus was a block of wood? Was He mahogany or rosewood? And Jesus had metal hinges and a knob?

Oh. He meant that symbolically. Correct?

Now...back to "This is my body"

Good day!

Mike