John chapter 6 41:65 "[56] For my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed. [57] He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in him. [58] As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth me, the same also shall live by me. [59] This is the bread that came down from heaven. Not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead. He that eateth this bread, shall live for ever. [60] These things he said, teaching in the synagogue, in Capharnaum.
[61] Many therefore of his disciples, hearing it, said: This saying is hard, and who can hear it?[62] But Jesus, knowing in himself, that his disciples murmured at this, said to them: Doth this scandalize you? [63] If then you shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before? [64]It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I have spoken to you,are spirit and life. [65] But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning, who they were that did not believe, and who he was, that would betray him."
Protestant Christian Understanding: God did not mean to say He turned the bread and wine into his ACTAUL body and blood. Rather if you read the verse further, he corrects the statement saying it is of the spirit and not his actual and physical body and blood. He was speaking in proverbs or in a spiritual sense, not a literal sense.
Catholic Christian Understanding: The verse of John 6:64 does not suggest anywhere that Christ meant everything He said in the verses before it in a figurative sense. What Jesus did say was that it is the spirit that quickeneth, that is, it is the spirit that gives life, and the flesh profits nothing. The problem here is that most Protestants read into this and say Christ corrects himself and says it is figurative language that will give the life giving gift of believing in Christ. The argument in question is was Christ speaking figuratively when he said this verse or not? The Catholic understanding is what the Bible proves to be true that Christ was not speaking figuratively but literally.
If Jesus wanted to say that he was speaking in figurative language, He would have said that very clearly to clear up the confusion, but He did not. He could have said exactly what he said in the later chapter in John 16:25 He says, "25 These things I have spoken to you in proverbs. The hour cometh, when I will no more speak to you in proverbs, but will shew you plainly of the Father." So we can see in this passage that Jesus uses the words "figurative language" or proverbs and is very clear about it. If that is what he intended to convey in John 6, why did He not use those words and clearly say so? What Christ DOES say in John 6:64 is that the words He has spoken to them are spirit and life (64) and the spirit gives life and the flesh profit nothing. So what does He mean by this?
He means a couple of things and the first thing that must be looked at to understand what He meant in verse 64 is by looking at the preceding verse 63. Jesus knowing that the disciples were murmuring and disturbed by what He just said in verse 61, asks them, "Does this bother you?" and then says in verse 63, "If then you shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?" That is the clue to what 64 means. Jesus is saying I am not taking a chunk of my body right now as I walk among you and asking you to eat it.
The word flesh in verse 64 is capable of meaning many things in the bible and we have to look at its context. In this passage, Christ did not mean actually taking a piece of his humanly body and ripping it off for them to eat, that would be cannibalism and against all Christian teaching. Christ was referring to his immortal, Godly flesh. His resurrected and ascended flesh, which is why He says in verse 62 and 63 to summarize, "If you are scandalized by what I have been saying, then you do not understand that something is going to have to be an intervening event to occur before I can give you this supernatural bestowal of My flesh and blood. (Verse 63) The Son of Man is going to have to ascend to where He was before, and you will see that happening first and when you see that I have risen from the dead and have an immortal human nature above the human body, when you see this new nature given to me by the Father and you see me return to the earth with the Holy Spirit so I will be with My Church till the end time, ONLY THEN, will you understand how the spirit can make spiritually possible the gift of my body and blood." So it is, and has been, Christ's real body and blood as the spiritual and mystical form as He says in this bible verse. So this is what He meant when he said, "it is the spirit that will give you new life" the flesh and blood of my old pre-death body or human body will profit you nothing. So it is clear that Christ was speaking about his actual body and blood and not using figurative language, but literal language. He was referring to his flesh from his immortal body.
As a final thought as I am always trying to be as rational as humanly possible when it comes to all of this, I recognize that Jesus' words could theoretically be understood literally or non-litterally. I agree there are two logical options there IF we do not look at the actual context. But the fact is, the bible uses the phrase, "to eat one's flesh and drink one's blood" in other places figuratively. However, that meaning of how the Bible uses it would mean something totally incomprehensible and nonsensical in this context.
If any Christian looks up the phrase "eat My flesh and drink My blood" in a bible concordance, which I have specifically researched for this excerpt, it would show from Psalms or from other passages where David would say, "My enemies eat my flesh and drink my blood." It is a semitic idiom that is still used by Arabs today in the same way, because Arabic and Hebrew are very similar languages. But what it means in that context is to attack someone, harass them or make their life a living hell. So if Jesus was also using this phrase figuratively, then He was also asking us to do the same thing to Him which would be nonsensical and completely absurd. He would have been saying unless someone attacks me, harasses me, mocks me then that person cannot have everlasting life. That makes absolutely no sense at all and is completely against every other message Jesus teaches in the bible. So therefore, the figurative sense of the phrase is preposterous and all that is left is the nonfigurative meaning of the phrase which Catholics understand as communion today.
A second understanding or argument can be made that the literal sense is clearly how the people hearing Christ took it. After hearing Christ say these words, the people say right in the passage, "This saying is hard, and who can hear it? How can this man give us His flesh to eat?"
They took it literally and MANY of them followed Christ no more because of it. Now since these people started leaving and making the choice that if this is what Jesus is about then we want nothing to do with it. We have to logically think from Jesus' shoes on why He did not chase after them as they all started to leave. If they were misunderstanding Jesus' words, then He would have been obliged to chase after them or clear up the misunderstanding as the Good Shepard. That would be a tragedy for all these "believers" to now turn their back on Christ and leave over a misunderstanding.
But Christ cannot make mistakes or communicate misunderstandings, he is the Master Teacher and He let them walk off because of the simple fact that they understood Him correctly, exactly how he meant it. He meant exactly what he said and proved it when he watched many of the people start to leave and turned to his Apostles and said, "Are you going to leave too?" He didn't say everyone is misunderstanding, and please help me stop them. He knew exactly how they took it, because it was exactly what He meant.
Thirdly, the literal sense of what Christ said (The Catholic Understanding) is literally how the early Church took it and understood it as well. Peter had a protege, or apprentice, who he taught named Ignatius. Ignatius was to carry on as the Bishop of Antioch after Peter had been there for some years as was going to leave. Ignatius of Antioch left us seven letters at the end of the first century. They can be read in a paperback called, Early Christian Writings, a protestant book that has the writings of the earliest Church fathers who were personally trained by the Apostles. In one of Ignatius's letters, the letter to the Church of Smyrna in chapter seven verse 1, he explains that the gnostics have broken away from the Church because they do not believe and refuse to admit that the Eucharist is the actual body of Christ, in which He suffered for our sins and His Father raised by His glory. So the early Church CLEARLY understood the Eucharist to be the ACTUAL body and blood of our Lord, so it begs the logical question: Who is more likely to have understood the Bible, the people who were handed the bible by the Apostles, like Ignatius of Antioch, who walked with them and were verbally taught what they meant when they wrote these things? Or, fallible men coming along 1500 years later (Martin Luther, John Calvin) who never walked with Christ, never walked with the Apostles but somehow inherit the authority to contradict those that did and say Christ was using a figure of speech and Christ did not mean it to be the literal body and blood of Himself.
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