The Eucharist (as practiced by the Roman Church)

Again DHK you assume the Last Supper celebrated in the upper room WAS a Passover Seder meal...no one has yet to prove that as fact...even the Catholic encyclopedia I quoted from admits that no one knows what type of bread was used in the upper room Last Supper...

In John 18:28 proves that the Passover meal had yet to be celebrated by the Jews:

Then they led Jesus from Caiaphas to the Praetorium, and it was early morning. But they themselves did not go into the Praetorium, lest they should be defiled, but that they might eat the Passover.​

It was early morning...the eve of the Passover feast, they had yet to partake in the Passover meal DHK...Christ celebrated a meal with His Apostles the night before...The jewish authorities didn't enter the Praetorium because they didn't want to defile themselves...Jesus was executed on the eve of Passover and was removed from the cross before sundown...Since the meal wasn't the actual Passover meal...they could've used plain 'ol bread...

In XC
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I just proved it in I Cor. 5:6-8. "Christ OUR passover" is "the feast" that Paul tells them to "keep" and the only "feast" you keep that recognizes Christ as "our passover" is the Lord's Supper. In that feast, He commands them not to use bread with "leaven" but to use "unleavened" bread.

 

But they didn't. They wouldn't have. Christ is our Passover. All the symbolism of the Bible goes against it. Christ would not have used that which represents sin and corruption to represent himself. It was the "Last Supper." To that we all agree. The Last Supper, Jesus prophetically knew would be the last time he would be with his disciples. It would be in imitation of the Passover, as is described in the gospel of John.

 

Actally no I don't. I don't recognize a specific day as "Easter". Instead, I try to preach that we should observe and celebrate the resurrection of Jesus every day.

Believe it or not, not every denomination was born from the Reformation. You love to point out church history and act as if I am ignorant of it, but it appears you are ignorant of the existence of Christians who held the truth and were persecuted by Rome long before the Reformation took place.

The reason you should fight to use unleavened bread is because that is what the Lord used to picture His body in the institution of the Lord's Supper. The reason you should be even more zealous of me is because you believe it literally becomes the physical body of Jesus. You are guilty of saying that a piece of leavened bread becomes the physical body of Jesus Christ, who was Himself unleavened.

 

Some of the most learned scholars of times gone by say this about the time sequence involved.
Jamieson, Faucett and Brown state:

 

It's obvious that you are setting aside the word of God with your man made doctrines and traditions. The fact that you are holding the fallible writings of man above scripture certainly tell us all we need to know.

 

St. Paul linked the unity of the Church to the Eucharistic bread: 'Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of one bread' I Cor. 10:17

 

oh my doctor, have you read 1 Corinthians 5:1-8...not just 6-8...St. Paul is referring to immorality as it defiles the Church... The Apostle Paul is speaking about unleavened bread allegorically to make his point. The unleavened bread means a new life free from spiritual pollutants such as evil and malice. In modern terms this could be presented as bread without any additives such as yeast, salt, honey etc... It has nothing to do with actual bread but is purely symbolic of the new life (unleavened bread) in the Risen Christ.

As St. Theophylact states: Not with the old leaven of Adam that is, not a life filled with evil or malice

This may shed some light too... In the Bible, unleavened bread is called "unleavened bread," whereas leavened bread is simply called "bread." The Jews would have understood this as would have the early Christians. It says that "He took bread," meaning leavened bread; and the Christians, being first instructed by the Apostles and then reading in the Gospels some time later, implemented this. At the Mystical Supper, it is obvious that our Lord was changing things, to tie the Passover meal with its fulfillment, the Eucharist. One of those changes, obviously, was using leavened bread instead of unleavened, or at least leavened in addition to unleavened. The world was empty and devoid of grace before Christ, as is symbolized by the flatness of the unleavened bread, but later filled with the glory of His Resurrection, as is symbolized by the leavened bread. Christ made the change, and the Church followed through on it.

The word for unleavened bread in Greek is AZYMOS it is used in the Greek New Testament nine times: Mt.26:17; Mk.14:1,12; Lk.22:1,7;Ac.12:3; 20:6; 1Cor.5:7,8.

The word for leavened bread is ARTOS it is used 97 times in the Greek New Testament.

The passages where they are relevant for the Mystical Supper are Mt. 26:26; Mk.14:22; Lk.22:19;24:30,35; 1 Cor.10:16,17(twice);11:26,27,28.

In all these places, the writers never say Jesus took AZYMOS and blessed it, they write that Jesus took ARTOS, common ordinary leavened bread.

I hope this helps.

In XC
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Your 'symbolic only' doctrine is what is man-made. The bible certainly doesn't support it and the Early Church didn't believe it.

 

The idea that "bread" only means leavened bread is not true. The bible speaks of bread being used as shewbread. It is unclear whether the bread was leavened or not. The bible doesn't make that clear. It was beleived by many Jews, however, that the shewbread was unleavened.

 

The bible doesn't support the bread literally transforming into the physical body of Christ.

 

There is not one bread: there are two.
One is leavened and the other unleavened.
One represents purity, and the other corruption and sin.
Which one do you suppose represents Christ?

"Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees."

 

RAdam, although i may not know every minute detail of Church History, I do know enough to get by and in that regard, i'm defiantly not ignorant of Church history...

The Patriarchate of Rome as of 1054 (and possibly earlier) was its own body, separate from the remaining four (4) Patriarchates in the East (Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria).

Long before Luther nailed his 95 thesis to the door and officially ushered in the "Reformation", there were already little uprisings of fringe offshoots from the RCC and yes, the Roman Church were persecuting them.

Meanwhile, the remaining four (4) Patriarchates in the East (Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria) had their own hands full with Islam, that had taken over their lands and were being persecuted themselves...mainly by unfair taxes and laws set upon them.

The Reformation of the western Church had nothing to do with the Churches in the East...Rome wasn't even persecuting the Orthodox Churches in the East, BUT that doesn't mean Rome didn't have their way with the Churches during the Crusades...oh, the Roman army sent out by the Roman Church sacked Constantinople numerous times, mind you.

Now my question to you is why do we see these fringe Baptist Churches ONLY in the Western Europe, near where the Patriarchate of Rome was?

Why don't or didn't we hear of any near or around, let say Antioch, where the Bible records those there were first called Christians?

In XC
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As if he has any credibility at all!

 

Where you are wrong is the idea that these were fringe groups that were offshoots of Rome. True believers always existed and were around before Rome and existed alongside Rome.

 

Then where are these persecuted group of clustered "true believers" around Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem or Alexandria in your version of church history (and there may be some...that's why i'm asking)...why don't we hear of Islam persecuting these groups? why only historical reports coming out of Rome only?

Again, why only do we see these groups only in the West?

In XC
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"Professor Wellhausen, in his life of Mohammed (Encylopaedia Britannica, XVI. 571, 9th Edition) gives a most interesting account of the Baptists of the Syro-Babylonian desert. He says they were called Sabians, Baptists, and that they practiced the primitive forms of Christianity. Indeed, 'Sabian' is an Arabized word meaning 'Baptists.' They literally filled with their members Syria, Palestine, and Babyonia (Renan, Life of Jesus, chap. XII). They were off the line of the main advance of Christianity, and were left untouched in their primitive simplicity. From them Mohammed derived many of his externals. The importance of this must not be undervalued. 'It can hardly be wrong to conclude,' continues Prof. Wellhausen, 'that these nameless witnesses of the Gospel, unmentioned in church history, scattered the seed from which sprung the term of Islam.' These Christians were the Paulicians." - John T. Christian, A History of the Baptists, Vol. I. pp. 50-51

The Roman Catholic Church charged them with Manichaeism which they denied they embraced but repudiated and yet in spite of their RECORDED DENIAL they are still being charged with this and many other false accusations in Roman Catholic History today.

 

"The visible assemblies of the Paulicians, or Albigeois, were extirpated by fire and sword; and the bleeding remnant escaped by flight, concealment, or Catholic conformity. But the invincible spirit whch they had kindled still lived and breathed in the Western world. In the state, in the church, and even in the cloister, a latent succession was preserved of the disciples of St. Paul; who protested against the tyranny of Rome, embraced the Bible as the fule of faith, and purified their creed from all the visions of the Gnostic theology." - Edward Gibbons, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. V, pp.398-399

 

I guess Ignatius who was instructed by the Apostles themselves has NO CREDIBILITY either. However, we are to believe the Baptist doctrine invented (man-made) by people far removed from the company of Apostles. Incredible!

 

We have the completed canon of Scripture and are able to compare Scripture with Scripture. Did Ignatius have every book at his disposal?
What errors according to Scripture did he espouse?
The apostles didn't preach error, but many of the ECF did. Why do you suppose that that happened?

Even the writings of Ignatius seem quite dubious.

Since leopards are not indigenous to the land between Syria and Rome it seems unlikely that this incident occurred, or maybe someone forged the letter and exaggerated what Ignatius went through. Leopards were at one time indigenous to that part of the land, but not in Ignatius time. It was in ancient history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatius_of_Antioch

This sounds like what Islam teaches today, not what the Apostles taught in the first century. Why should we believe Ignatius.