You appear to be correctly arguing against something no one claimed. You misunderstood Armstrong’s meaning. This is what she said:
Yet many of P’s first readers would have found the first chapter of Genesis rather a shock. In the ancient Near East, this vision of the creation was radically new. God appears in the very first sentence without any introduction. P uses the formal divine title “Elohim,” a term that sums up everything that the divine can mean for humanity. In a world where there were many deities, a reader would be likely to ask, “Which god are we talking about?” or “What is Elohim?” Most of the Near Eastern deities had parents and complex biographies that distinguished them from one another, but P introduces his Elohim without telling us anything about his origins or past history in primordial time.
She is not claiming every use of Elohim is the formal divine title. She is saying that Elohim – in how P is using it-- is a formal title that “sums up everything that the divine can mean for humanity.”
You’re making this like it’s your interpretation vs mine. I’m pitting yours versus the entire Orthodox Church in its first 1500 years of existence. Transubstantiation was not the belief. That was a later metaphysical explanation of the Church’s dogma that in the Eucharist we are dealing with the real flesh and blood of Jesus. That is is the believe that is found in the earliest church and throughout until probably Zwingli, though I could be wrong. I have consistently hoisted my interpretation of Jesus in John (and the Synoptics) and Paul on the back of that consensus. That is clearly how they understood it and practiced it throughout the Church. Also, since I am not Protestant, I absolutely can claim the Magisterium’s authoritative pronouncements are correct. You can absolutely disagree. And that would be fruitless to argue about but as you know, it is the view of the Catholic Church, and mine, that God left behind a Church, not an army of individuals with pocket Bibles and private interpretations of scripture. Even if you disregard Catholicism in such a sense, you do not need to disregard the entire Church the same. You might be able to argue the scriptures were too guarded at one point but it’s apparent to me the pendulum has swung wildly out of control in the opposite direction. If you can willy-nilly prioritize your private interpretation over virtually 1500 years of almost universal Church history, I am not sure why I am expected think its my view of scripture vs yours here? It’s the Church vs you and a few modern sectarians.
Oh you do come out with some ridiculous arguments.
Read my other post. I won’t repeat it here. Suffice it to say that there is no definitive view of Scripture, and I certainly do not claim mine over any other.
Countless arguments could be made on this subject, and I have previously advanced almost all of them in this very forum during a debate with a user who was transitioning to non-Trinitarian Christianity (which, imho, is an oxymoron). However, even if we choose to disregard the authority of the ecumenical councils and the external testimonies confirming that early Christians worshipped Jesus as God while remaining monotheists (such as Pliny the Younger’s letter to Emperor Trajan in 112 AD), there is a scriptural argument that is far more powerful than the usual proof-texts like the Prologue of John or Romans 9:5. I’m referring to 1 John 4:16, which states that “God is love”. The text doesn’t merely claim that God loves, but that God is love by His very nature. Because love is inherently relational, the Godhead cannot be a solitary monad. Therefore, for God to be love inherently requires the multi-personal nature of the one true God.
I wouldn’t say most. The vast majority of the global Christian population in the world is Catholic and Orthodox (even if there are specific countries where the majority of Christians are reformed), both of which explicitly reject consubstation (let alone Zwinglian symbolism which rejected both consubstantiation and transubstantiation).
That is the reason why I think that arguments about some doctrinal details, like what are the bread and wine in the Eucharist/Lord’s Supper, are usually not fruitful.
If someone is truly interested to know why the other has a differing interpretation, that may be a starting point for fruitful discussion. Too often, that is not the primary motivation, although it may be claimed to hide the actual intention: to convert the ‘heretic’ to the true() path of faith.
There are several alternative interpretations about the Eucharist/Lord’s Supper and each interpretation can claim some support from the biblical scriptures. As we tend to interpret the relevant passages through our worldview and general framework of interpretations, readers may interpret a passage in different ways. So, even citing the biblical scriptures or early Christian writers will not convince those who interpret the text through a different framework. That may make the debates frustrating and fruitless.
Still one comment that should be trivial: numbers do not quarantee who is more correct than the others. The size of the denomination does not tell that it has the best or worst interpretation. Otherwise, RCC would be always correct in Italy but never correct in Finland or some other country where RCC is a small minority denomination.
To be honest, this is a terrible argument. I mean, I absolutely agree that the size of a denomination does not guarantee that it holds the truth. However, even if one were to accept that foolish notion, the importance of a denomination’s size would have to be based on its global presence, certainly not on its size within a single country.
The Gospel and the teachings of the Church are for all people, Jesus Himself commanded to preach the Gospel to every creature.
Anyway, size is neither here nor there. What matters most, in my opinion, is the antiquity of certain teachings and how they were received by the entirety of the early Church. That is the most logical parameter, certainly not size. But what is even less logical, in my view, is believing that God left His faithful in darkness and error regarding fundamental teachings for literally fifteen centuries.
Especially because it opens an entire Pandora’s box of endless subjectivism (where for example some ecumenical Councils are believed to be authoritative and others not); it takes a quite inflated view of oneself to believe that “we”modern individuals are right, while the people who were closest to Jesus and His disciples got it all wrong.
It wasn’t that “fruitful” when Jesus talked about it in John 6 either. His own disciples felt so scandalized by it many left Him.
**60 **When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” **61 **But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, “Does this offend you? . . . **Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.
Jesus just fed 5,000 people in this story. Maybe this scene isn’t historical? But as John presents it, Jesus’s own followers were so offended (by the symbolism that doesn’t go beyond other information in John?) many left Him.
I will state up front I am not interested in any symbolic views of the Eucharist and while I might take the person seriously, I am certainly not entertaining their views seriously. A person in front of me I will politely inquire why a person holds their views if it comes up (the teacher in me). Even without the Magisterium, it is too universal in the first 1500 years of the Church for me to question. Now there is some dispute (at least one guy) of the specific interpretation in the 800s but I think the first outright denial was in the 1000s. I don’t think major disagreement (popularity wise) happens until the 16th century but I could be wrong.
Of course arguments from popularity are fallacious as logical proofs. We are talking about how to interpret 2,000 year old documents written in a dead language. The real presence is virtually universal across Orthodoxy for 1500 years—east and west. It shows up in the earliest Christians (see above for caveats).
I would just tell modern Christians to humbly keep in mind that in the first 400 years of Christian history, there seems to have been far more more unity on the real presence of Jesus and the Eucharist not being only a symbol than on the exact extent of the New Testament canon.
It was even more universal than the full divinity of Jesus, which is why early ecumenical councils settled the matter on the fully divine and fully human natures of Jesus, while the Eucharist was left untouched: not because the Eucharist was unimportant (the Eucharist is Christ Himself), but because the heretics didn’t dare to challenge that universal teaching in the early centuries.
When a teaching was dogmatically defined it didn’t happen just because, it happened because it was attacked by heresies.
One thing to remember is that the Protestant reformation did not start as an attempt to establish a new church or doctrine. There were persons who saw that the contemporary teaching in the church seemed to be in conflict with the early apostolic teaching. They wanted a reformation within the church, a return to the original apostolic teachings. History tells what happened: there were no acceptance of the hopes, just a demand to repent and shut the mouth, or…
The defenders of the prevailing teaching in the church and those demanding a reformation within the church were both building on the roots and early history of the church. There just were disagreements about what the early teachings (interpretations) in the church were and if the leaders of the church had the right to add new doctrines that seemed to be in conflict with the early teaching in the church.
The early disputes were circling around a limited number of doctrines. Later others demanded that the reformation should also include some other doctrines, for example the age when the child can be baptised (depends on what the baptism is) and what the words of Jesus meant when he was talking about eating his body and blood and that this should be done to remember.
I admit that the ongoing splitting of the body of Christ into tens of thousands of groups is unfortunate, although it should be remembered that the majority of those groups think that they are just a small part of the universal church. Believers in small local churches identify themselves to the same body as the believers in many other local churches. From that viewpoint, there is actually a greater unity among believers than the official number of the local churches indicates.
In fact, it may resemble the early congregational phase in the history of the church. At that time, local churches were independent but had links to the other churches that ‘accepted the teachings of all the apostles’. The teachings were close enough to give a sense of belonging to the same body but there were minor differences in the practices and also in the teachings between the local churches.
I agree the Reformation started as reform within the Church. As far as I have learned, Luther never intended to start a new church. I would also agree how the Church handled this and corruption is less than admirable. Pope Francis stated Luther was “rightly upset by the corruption, greed, worldliness, and lust for power" that plagued the Church at the time.
I don’t disagree but this is not applicable in this case. Here is the problem. There is no disagreement on this issue anywhere for a thousand years and very little that next 500. The real presence is the unanimous view of the entire Orthodox Church. Far more unanimous than the books of scripture itself (at least for 400 years). Martin Luther knew this and respected the ancient views. I believe he said:
“Sooner than have mere wine with the fanatics, I would agree with the pope that there is only blood.”
Luther did not accept transubstantiation but he accepted the literal flesh and flood through something he called sacramental unions.Luther also put a bunch of NT works like Hebrew and James—based on early Church fathers at the back of his German translation. Even he seems to have considered the real presence as set in stone whereas he could relegate some canonical books to the back.
Even Calvin accepted the real presence, he just reversed it. We go up rather than the flesh come down. This seems to be a good summary of his view:
He insisted that believers receive a true, substantial feeding on the very body and blood of Christ, but this occurs pneumatically (by the power of the Holy Spirit) rather than carnally (orally chewing physical flesh). Rather than dragging Christ’s physical body down to altars across the globe, Calvin argued that the Holy Spirit bridges the infinite spatial divide, lifting the believer by faith into the heavenly sanctuary to genuinely commune with Christ’s glorified humanity.
I would not fault people for having different explanations of how the real presence is possible. The major problem is denying the real presence itself which is what the Church always accepted and taught.
No one is claiming that the historic view is wrong par se. Or even that it is wrong now. What e are saying is that there can be other valid views. I am objecting to the assertion that
“The Catholic Church has got it right and everyone else has got it wrong.”
If that is not what is intended, then someone somewhere needs to rewrite Catholic Dogma. We are left with nothing better than the old Creed Anathemas, that remain in the Athanasian creed and were removed from the Nicene Creed.
I mean either the Eucharist is Christ Himself or it’s not, there is really not much getting around it. That view is either right or wrong. But as I said one will not be condemned for not assenting through no fault of their own to certain doctrines, the real blame is on those ceno splitted the Church back then to advance their own agenda.
And just to be precise, it’s not merely a Catholic matter. Throughout the entirety of the first millennium, the nature of the Eucharist was never disputed. This is why the dogma was defined only later on; a dogmatic definition is never an invention, but rather something enacted when a fundamental teaching on faith and morals is challenged by heresies. Furthermore, the Church of the first millennium was basically unified (like I said there was the Calcedonian Schism but all in all the Church was immensely more unified). The division between Catholics and Orthodox did not exist (and I have previously shown many declarations from Eastern patriarchs who recognized the authority of Rome during that time) much less did Reformed Christianity exist.
So, it is far from being a denominational matter.
But you can say that the nature of the Eucharist was a catholic doctrine in the sense that it was universally held in the first millennium, and catholic means universal. So in that sense it was a “catholic” doctrine from the beginning.
You are missing the point. It is not just about Catholicism but exclusivity. No one has the “right” view, because there is no “right” view. Faith is not black and white and neither is Theology. Science is based on black & white viewing, but that view falls when you are discussing or understanding faith.
The words used and the interpretation of those words are different matters. For example, in the church/denomination where I go, we use the words ‘the body of Christ’ and ‘the blood of Jesus’ when blessing and distributing the bread and wine. We take those words seriously and deeply but do not think that bread would turn to flesh or wine to blood. We think Jesus is present in that moment (through the Holy Spirit), as he was present during the first occasion, when he blessed the bread and wine while being himself by the table (not on the table).
RCC has its interpretation and I do not try to attack against it. I just point to the fact that there are differing interpretations and the differing interpretations are also based on the teaching of the apostles and their followers.
) path of faith.
