Does John Gospel
really teach that
bread and wine turn into Jesus?
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JOHN 6
REFUTES TRANSUBSTANTIATION
WHY JOHN
6 CANNOT MEAN TRANSUBSTANTIATION
HAVE
CATHOLICS JUMPED THE GUN?
WHAT
IS EATING JESUS AND DRINKING HIS BLOOD?
Roman Catholicism claims to believe that the Bible is the word of God - God is its author.
John chapter 6 in the Bible has Jesus saying that he who comes to him will never hunger and who believes in him will never thirst. He said that he is the living bread come down from Heaven and that the bread he will give is his flesh for the life of the world. The Jews murmured how can this man give us his flesh to eat. Jesus said that unless they munch his flesh and drink his blood they have no life in them and whoever munches his flesh and drinks his blood has eternal life. He added that his flesh was real food and his blood real drink. He said the man who eats him will live because of him. Jesus said that he lives in whoever eats him.
This seems to support the Catholic fantasy that the priest turns bread and wine at communion into the body and blood of Christ so that they are not bread and wine anymore. The Church does not tell us that the language in other parts of the Bible which refers to the Church as part of Jesus Christ and his body sounds even more literal. The Bible uses very literal looking language in saying that the Church is the Body of Christ. It never gives any hint that this is metaphorical. Yet nobody says the Church is literally Jesus Christ. All take it as strong symbolism. Because of the human liking for idols, Rome takes John 6 as saying the bread and wine of communion change into Jesus Christ.
But Jesus never says the man has to consciously eat the body and drink the blood. It is possible that if you just believe you are automatically fed because the Bible teaches that you are put right with God by faith alone. The Bible teaches a morality that we all fall short of. For example, Jesus said the most important commandment was to love God with all your heart and the second most important one was to love your neighbour as yourself. In other words, love God more than yourself or your neighbour. If you murder six million people and incinerate them in ovens it is not the hurting of people that should matter so much as that God is offended by it. This is so difficult that salvation can't have anything to do with earning or good works.
Eating the body of Jesus can't do anything for you. Drinking his blood can't do anything for you. You can eat and drink without digesting or assimilating them. Only assimilating the body and blood of Jesus might. Verse 57 may prove assimilation. There it says that just as Jesus lives because of the Father so he who eats Jesus will live because of him. Jesus is permeated by the Father and the Father is his origin. It is far closer than the closeness between us and food, the closeness of us living because of the food we assimilate. Jesus means that by assimilating him we live entirely because of his body and we become it. Assimilating Jesus is as close as the dependence of Jesus on his Father - we assimilate Jesus by becoming his body.
Jesus means when we are saved by him by faith we are fed with the body and blood of Jesus in the sense that we become them. We eat his body by becoming it. We drink his blood by our blood becoming his.
He commands that his blood be drunk. To drink Jesus' blood is not to drink Jesus so this is heavy symbolism. He wouldn't say that he lives in the man who eats his body for that sounds strange. It sounds like a man saying he drives in the car he drives. He would talk that way if he meant we become his body making him live in us. The meaning would be as follows. His spirit is so close to us that our flesh is his flesh and our blood is his blood. This interpretation is shown to be possible by other parts of the New Testament.
In the same gospel, Jesus said that he was the vine and the disciples were the branches. So they were all one body.
The apostle Paul taught that true Christians are parts of the body of Christ.
JOHN 6 REFUTES TRANSUBSTANTIATION
The Sixth Chapter of the Gospel
According to
JOHN 6:52, THE CRUCIAL VERSE
In John 6 Jesus after multiplying bread for the Jews tells them to seek the bread that takes away all hunger and that his flesh is the bread he will give. They ask how this can give his flesh to eat but he tells them they need to eat his body and drink his blood to have salvation and never hunger again. Roman Catholicism says this refers to the Eucharist and the bread and wine being changed or transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ, despite the fact that there was no Last Supper, when Jesus shared bread and wine saying they were his body and blood. John 6 is the only place in the Bible that might teach the transubstantiation idea.
The Christians take John 6 to be Jesus symbolically saying he can be eaten and drunk to illustrate the need for having a relationship with him as the saviour who gave his body and blood on the cross for sinners so that one might be saved.
The Catholics take John 6 literally saying it refers to their miracle of transubstantiation. They argue that when the Jews said among themselves that they wondered how Jesus could give them his flesh to eat and when Jesus didn’t correct them that Jesus agreed with their literal interpretation for he kept saying that they had to eat his body and added that they had to drink his blood too.
Jesus had said that he is the living bread come down from Heaven and that the bread he will give to save the world is his flesh. But Jesus is not bread. The Eucharist doctrine teaches that bread becomes Jesus and ceases to exist so it is not a matter of Jesus becoming bread!
When Jesus said that the bread he will give us to eat is his flesh the Jews asked in John 6:52, “How is He able to give us His flesh to eat?”
The Jews asking how Jesus can give his flesh to eat could have been natural enough for when a man talks in symbols you might ask him questions using the same metaphors. It is like somebody saying they will bite your head off and you asking: “Why would you bite my head off?” It would not mean you take them literally.
Jesus said that he is the bread of life and whoever eats it will never hunger and the bread he will give is his flesh for the life of the world. All agree that the bread of life material is symbolic and only Catholics hold that the bread he will give is his flesh bit is not symbolic but literal. Life is the bread that brings you to everlasting life. It is called the bread of life in the sense that life is the bread. This life is a supernatural life that enjoys a supernatural relationship with God and lasts forever.
It is wrong to imagine Jesus moving from the subject of symbolic bread to bread that has been transubstantiated into flesh. To do that would make it impossible to tell what was symbolic and what wasn’t especially in such a strange subject matter. This would be sufficient evidence and a clear hint that the Jews knew that Jesus was not talking literally. That way, there would have been no need for him to say he was speaking figuratively. The Catholic argument that the Jews took him literally and he accepted that literalism when he did not refute it but went on to say more about eating his body and drinking his blood is incorrect. Nobody mixes literalism and symbolism in such a way so Jesus meant that the bread and flesh both are symbols. He is saying that he is bread to the soul.
If Jesus was unintelligible then the passage cannot support transubstantiation for it is confused and silly.
The Jews would have taken Jesus to mean cannibalism if they took him literally. The way Jesus was talking some of them if not all would have had to take him that way.
If so, then Jesus was promising cannibalism. Even Catholicism cannot accept that.
Catholicism would say, "But then they would not have been arguing and wondering about how he could give his flesh to eat for cannibalism is not a mystery. You just die and are cooked and eaten."
The answer is that Jesus knew they did not mean it literally when they asked how he could give his flesh to eat. He did not tell them that he meant transubstantiation and not cannibalism. He never said, “I will turn bread into my body and you will eat it.” He never told them what he meant. How can this man give us his flesh to eat could mean in what way will he do it?
When Jesus was after multiplying bread miraculously they would not have been asking how he could give his flesh like bread for miracles can’t be understood. They thought he meant that he would die to give himself as spiritual food by means of earning grace to save us which was considered impossible for a Messiah. Also, Catholics may claim that Jesus answered them that he meant it literally but this is untrue for he did not go into the hows at all. He did not even say as much as that his flesh would take the form of bread and his blood wine. He just talked about giving his flesh for them to eat.
Had the Jews been taking Jesus literally they would not have been wondering how he could give his flesh to eat after he multiplied bread. They would have thought that Jesus would miraculously multiply his flesh presumably in a cooked and edible form. They must have taken the spiritual interpretation meaning, “How can this man feed us with himself, how can his flesh be the source of grace for us and grace is the food that we need to be close to God, when he is not even the Messiah?”
The Jews could have been arguing about how he could give his body in mockery of Jesus when they mumbled among themselves that they couldn’t see how this man could give them his flesh to eat. It could have been a mock question intended to express scorn. The fact that they had no reason to think he would literally give his flesh as the verse, “I am the bread of life and the bread I will give is my flesh” shows should hint at that. Jesus had no need to answer mockery and people making fun of him and there is no reason to believe he even heard them or was speaking to the mockers, if that is what they were, when he went on to say “you must eat my body” for maybe most people in the group didn’t join in the mockery.
The Catholic argument for transubstantiation rests on Jesus not answering the Jews when they murmured how he could give his body as food but continuing to say they would eat his body. But John never said if Jesus heard them or not. The fact that they mumbled among themselves and not to him suggests that he never noticed. They wouldn’t all have been grumbling so Jesus could have been addressing the ones who did not when he told them to eat him. Jesus told them minutes before to stop their murmuring when they said he was only the son of Joseph and couldn't have come down from Heaven. Thus he had told them he was not going to respect their mutterings and so the Catholic argument is devoid of substance.
If the Jews took Jesus literally,
he disapproved then because the chapter gives them no reason to do that it
could be that this is a hint that when Jesus went on to say the rest that he
did so in a tone of voice that carried his disgust at their infantile
literalism. Jesus may have done this earlier in the sermon when he did not
refute the Jews who argued that he was not the bread from heaven when they knew
his father. They were claiming that he was saying that he never had a human
birth. He considered their argument to be sarcasm and had no need to reply to
it. Having said that, the apostles complained that Jesus could be so enigmatic
that he could be confusing (John
The Jews knew that Jesus could not do silly miracles and had been taught that his grace was the food for the soul. Therefore, they could not have meant to give the impression that they took Jesus literally.
If the Jews took Jesus to mean
transubstantiation then this would have been asking them to drink blood and to
honour the bread and drink turned into Jesus. He would have been put out of the
synagogue for saying such things inside it. He wasn’t. He was even allowed into the
The Holy Spirit is said to be water you can drink in John 7:37-39 and John 3:5 and nobody takes those literally. Jesus didn't have to tell the Jews they were wrong to take him literally when he said he would give his flesh to eat for they must have known the kind of symbolism he engaged in. You don't answer real or feigned ignorance like that. You don't dignify it.
Catholics put their own interpretation on John 6. It is not the text that they base transubstantiation on but their interpretation. It all hangs on their notion that the Jews must have been right to interpret Jesus literally when he promised to give his flesh as food when he said nothing to correct them. And they know that the Jews in the same gospel took Jesus to be saying he would destroy the Temple in chapter 2 and never corrected them. And they know that the Samaritan woman wasn't corrected when she thought that Jesus was going to give her magic water in 4. They know that the Jews weren't corrected when they thought he said his followers would never experience physical death in John 8:51.
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WHY JOHN 6 CANNOT MEAN TRANSUBSTANTIATION
John 6 does not teach the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation for these reasons.
* The Jews sternly required that flesh for eating have no blood in it. The blood had to be drained off. Blood was sacred and the symbol of life. Thus Jesus saying you can eat my flesh meant eat my corpse if you take him literally. Also then, drink my blood meant drink my life. This contradicts the Catholic doctrine that the living body of Jesus is received in communion. It teaches that the bread is both the body and blood of Jesus. And it teaches that the wine is also the body and blood of Jesus. But Jesus separates them.
* Jesus said he was the manna of life like the manna of the Hebrews was essential for their lives. We are told in the Old Testament that God gave Israel manna which was bread that fell from Heaven to feed them in the desert. The Eucharist is not as essential for spiritual life as the manna was for physical. If it is then anybody who does not receive the Eucharist will be damned. The Church has never taught this.
* The psalms and the Old Testament say that God gave the Hebrews the manna. The Jews Jesus was preaching to must have thought that Moses gave the manna. He corrected their error for he said that it is not Moses who gives the bread from Heaven the manna but God the Father in Heaven. In a passage full of metaphors and symbols this is important. He was saying that the bread is not human bread. God's bread from Heaven is invisible food and has nothing to do with communion wafers.
* Jesus said that those who eat his bread will never hunger and it is his flesh and he who eats it will live forever.
Therefore it is permanent nourishment or permanent sustenance. The Catholic Eucharist is not permanent nourishment for Jesus only feeds you until the communion wafer is turned into ordinary food in the stomach which takes about ten or fifteen minutes. If he stays behind after the wafer is gone then it is impossible to see what the Eucharist would need to be received over and over again for.
* The passage starts off with Jesus saying he is the bread of life using evident symbolism for he is not bread. At this verse Catholics believe he changes the subject to transubstantiation. “I [myself] am this Living Bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this Bread, he will live forever; and also the bread that I shall give for the life of the world is My flesh” (v51). So, the first part is symbolism and the second part is literal according to Catholics. But you can’t use symbolic language and then switch to literal language that looks like symbolic talk without warning. Jesus would not have done that for that would only confuse his hearers. He would have said that he was speaking literally now and that the bread he will give is his flesh.
There is supposed to be symbolism in the second part of the sentence because the Catholics say the Eucharist is not bread but is the flesh of Jesus and Jesus calls it bread here. So, it is symbolically bread.
* The doctrine of transubstantiation or the real presence implies that what looks like bread and wine to unbelievers is really the body and blood of Jesus Christ. The Bible forbids lying under all circumstances and by implication it forbids deception. It forbids disguise and Jesus is disguising himself as bread and wine. The Church may reply that we are told by Jesus that it is him not bread and wine and if we won’t believe him then we can hardly say he deceived us. But who is saying it? John who wrote years after the events. And owing to the gospel being only assumed to be John’s work it is doubtful that he did say it. We don’t even know who he was or if he was really an apostle. John saying Jesus said it is not the same as Jesus saying it. We are no better off. To the crime against God of idolatry, the Mass adds the crime of accusing God of double standards.
* It seems to some that it is a mistake to say that Jesus’ words, “My flesh is true and genuine food,” in John 6 disprove the mystical changing of the bread into Jesus on the grounds that they are in the present tense and the Eucharist hadn’t been instituted yet. Jesus may be saying that he is ready to be our real food. You can point to a living cow and say that it is food indeed. It is food but not prepared food. But against this it seems probable that Jesus meant prepared food for that is food in the fullest and clearest sense of the word for the word translated eat when he said eat my flesh is really the word for gnaw or chew. But then it would have to be just spiritual food and not real eating of the body of Jesus. Why? Because even then according to transubstantiation believers Jesus was not physically prepared food for they teach that only the resurrection body of Jesus could take on the appearance of bread and wine in the Eucharist. Also Jesus in the Gospel of John that the Holy Spirit cannot come until he ascends to Heaven first (John 6:62 and 7:38 and 16:7). He says a few verses after saying that his flesh is real food that he hasn’t ascended yet. His flesh cannot be food then until the Spirit comes for the Spirit is the presence of God the true food of the soul. The present tense then indicates symbolism. Jesus is real food for the soul here and now but not in the form of bread. He then says the flesh is useless and can’t give life without the spirit which means his own flesh for the context is about him ascending bodily into Heaven to send the Spirit. Jesus corrected anybody that thought he was literally going to feed people with his body and blood.
* Jesus said that anybody who eats him would never hunger (verse 35, 57). He may mean spiritually. They will not hunger for grace. Protestants might think that if Jesus is physically in the Eucharist then anybody who eats it will never physically hunger again. But if it means grace then people do hunger for grace after the Eucharist for they are still imperfect and need this grace, this special supernatural help from God. It must mean grace for even the body of Christ cannot satisfy without its being infused with grace. But suppose it means the body of Jesus. Even Catholics hunger for another feed of Jesus’ body. If Jesus means that he is eaten as a symbol for emotionally and spiritually loving him and enjoying him the passage makes complete sense. To eat then would mean to realise that Jesus is and accept him as your emotional and spiritual fulfilment. Eat means fall in love with Jesus who suffers for your sins. Eat means that so to eat his body means to love his person and to drink his blood means to love his suffering and bleeding for your sins.
If the Eucharist were really this food that ended all physical or spiritual hunger then the Church would only administer it the once. That would mean that Catholic Masses were mostly invalid for only First Communion Masses would be valid. What would happen is that if you receive the body and blood of Jesus in communion a miracle of God would put the body and blood of Christ in your body forever. The substance of Jesus would somehow be still in your body even after the forms of bread and wine are absorbed and digested. The Church’s interpretation of “Do this in memory of me” as commanding endless Eucharists, then contradicts this view. Why doesn’t Jesus just transubstantiate our bodies into his own if he wants to be bodily close to us? It makes sense if he starts transubstantiation because he so keen on being with us physically, he would arrange that he could be permanently resident in our bodies by transubstantiation so that our bodies seem to be normal flesh and blood but are actually his body and blood. Perhaps eat my flesh and drink my blood is a metaphor for consenting to be turned into the body and blood of Christ. In a sense, if you consent you are assimilating them and the word eat or drink could be used to picture that.
* Jesus using the present tense and saying things like “unless you eat my body”, which is an invitation to the Jews does not prove that he had no intention of turning bread and wine into himself. Some say it does for there was no Eucharist then. But it was available in the sense that Jesus could have given them his body and blood there and then. However the Church says only the baptised could receive the Eucharist. But Jesus is inviting Jews here! If baptism is needed then Jesus did not mean transubstantiation and the present tense would disprove the Eucharistic interpretation.
* “Jesus said to them, I assure you, most solemnly I tell you, you cannot have any life in you unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood” (verse 53). Life means the fullness of life and grace that comes from being in a relationship with God that endures for all eternity. Catholics say he was only saying you cannot be saved if you know you need to eat the flesh of Jesus and drink his blood in the Eucharist but refuse to do it. But the Jews didn’t know. Nothing in John 6 hints that they were true believers or had any real reason to believe Jesus was the Son of God. Their hostility proves they were not. So Jesus was saying that unless they ate and drank him they had no hope in the full literal and rigid sense. The Church never taught that the Eucharist is that necessary for salvation or life which indicates that the passage was not taken in the Catholic sense in the early centuries of the Church. It would be madness and blasphemy to say that you could go to Hell for not eating communion wafers as if the presence of God and Jesus inside you without communion meant nothing. Even Jesus declared people saved without the Eucharist meaning that eating his body or drinking his blood stands for accepting him as the saviour who sacrificed his body and blood for you. Jesus didn’t say you won’t have life in you if you don’t eat and drink but that you won’t have any life in you. This emphasis is striking and tells us a lot. It tells us that Jesus was saying there is no grace or happiness or relationship with God at all in a person who does not eat his body and blood. It is so obvious that he couldn’t have meant that if you take the eating and drinking as physical acts that it is undeniable that eating and drinking must stand for getting strength and changing your life through loving Jesus and being loved by him as your saviour who spilled his blood on your behalf. The Jews would have taken the words “unless you” literally for what other way would you have taken it if you had been in that audience? That was how they were meant then. To take eat and drink as referring to communion makes the passage so ridiculous that it must be rejected. This was all said by Jesus in reply to the Jews when they asked how he could give his flesh to eat which made it clear that if they were taking him to be referring to real eating they were wrong!
* Jesus said that whoever eats his flesh lives in him and he lives in that person. Lives means takes up residence in. Jesus staying in you fifteen minutes is not him living in you. He links this taking up residence in you with eating him. If he meant he was literally giving you his body then this excludes the Catholic doctrine of the Mass. Somehow God is able to give your soul the literal body of Jesus invisibly and without sacraments. The Catholic Church would have no philosophical or logical problem with that view but it says it is false for it contradicts its doctrine that the Mass is needed and is the centre of Christian life. The Church is contradicted by its Bible so true Christians then eat Jesus all the time. Jesus then is not present in the communion wafer of Mass.
The Catholic response is that Jesus means that if you eat his body though this feeding stops as soon as the wafer disintegrates, Jesus' spirit stays in your soul and lives in it. This is a very forced interpretation. It is like saying that, "If John drinks for a little while in my pub he lives in it", makes sense. "If John drinks 24/7 in my pub then he lives in it", is what we would expect.
Catholics teach that you must already have Jesus's spirit living in your soul if you are to eat his body so they don't believe their own response.
The desire to have Jesus in the form of bread actually smacks of idolatry and a hankering towards it. It means that the Church rejects and despises the friendly Jesus of the gospel of John who does not do things like that but mystically unites his body to his people in all times and all places. It means there is more concern for getting people to believe Jesus is in the wafer than in them.
If Jesus as God dwells in his people that is the only kind of presence that matters. His body and blood would be immaterial. They add nothing. So why the fuss about how great eating the body of Jesus and drinking his blood at Mass?
* After the change of bread into the body of Jesus and wine into his blood no physical change can be detected. The Church says that the change still happens. What makes the bread bread is gone and replaced with what makes Jesus' body Jesus' body. This is not a physical change. The Church says there is a change but not a physical one. This denies that the physical Jesus really was his body - Jesus is really the ghostly thing that makes his body his body. In 1 John we read condemnations of the antichrists who said that Jesus was not a real man - those who deny that Jesus came in the flesh. The same person wrote the gospel and the letter so the Catholic doctrine should be rejected. 1 John implies that the Mass blasphemes Jesus so severely and is so anti-Jesus that nobody has the objective right to attend Mass. Also, Protestants are betraying their faith by attending Mass. To attend Mass implies that you think it is not bad enough to stay away from. The Protestant cannot argue, "I attend Mass because I has some agreement with the Catholic faith. I attend to honour the good teachings of the Church that I agree with. I do not attend to imply that I think one faith is as good as another." That would only hold if Catholicism didn't make serious errors in the Mass. Even the Nazis have some good teachings - you don't invite them to your parish hall and say, "Oh I disagree with them a lot but they have so much good to offer and it is the good I want to focus on." You know by instinct that to do that is to condone them. You know you are making an excuse. You don't argue that you give your child a hardcore porn to teach them about sex and that they can get some good out of it and that makes it right.
* The John 6 passage comes so close to transubstantiation language and still does not teach it. Doesn’t that show that it probably opposes the doctrine? It is a clear hint.
* If Jesus had been talking to Greek students of Aristotle who knew of his doctrine that the things we can sense about bread are not the bread but the real bread is something called substance that has no parts we might have a little reason to think that he was talking about transubstantiation. Even then Aristotle's students would have agreed with Aristotle that though the physical things we can sense about the bread are not the bread but the bread is something different it does not mean that the something different can become Jesus Christ without any physical change being apparent.
To Jesus' Jewish listeners, if bread becomes flesh it cannot keep the physical qualities of bread and still change. Also, Roman Catholicism itself cannot explain transubstantiation. How does it know that the change prevents the bread being bread and also the body of Jesus Christ at the same time? If substance is invisible and undetectable then we don't know what it is only that it is. We don't know what it can do! Also bread is only what we call a collection of things that are not bread. Chemicals and minerals and so on. The calcium in the bread is not bread. The bread does not have a single substance at all - it is made up of countless billions of substances. Yet the Church says that if a priest tries to transubstantiate a calcium supplement into Jesus it won't work. The magic only works with bread. John 6:44-46 has Jesus stating that the Father has already taught the people before him. Jesus also said in these verses that the prophets predicted that the people will be taught by God and whoever has heard the Father comes to Jesus. This hints that what he has to say about the bread of life and eating his flesh and drinking his blood must be interpreted by looking for clues in the Old Testament. It says nothing about bread and wine turning into the flesh and blood of Jesus.
* The notorious doctrine that the bread physically turns into flesh and the wine turns into real blood and that God makes us sense that they are still bread and wine to make them palatable fits John 6 better than transubstantiation. The Church rejected this incredible doctrine at the Fourth Lateran Council and favoured transubstantiation. The differences is that with transubstantiation the physical aspects of bread and wine are real and do not change with the latter God changes sense perception so that though there is a slab of raw meat on the altar it looks like bread to us.
* The book of Acts states that after Jesus went to Heaven the apostles maintained the Jewish rule of not consuming blood. The apostles themselves would not have understood the concept of transubstantiation. If they believed that the bread and wine were the body and blood of Jesus they didn't have the philosophy or the theology to know if that meant taking communion was not the same as cannibalism. The Roman Church says the early Church only got the basics and it was left to the Church fathers to understand and explain doctrines further. The Catholic Church claims that though the bread is Jesus and the wine his blood to partake of communion is not cannibalism for the appearances of bread and wine remain. It is the appearance of bread not the flesh of Jesus that is eaten physically. It is the appearance of wine that nourishes the body physically - there is no actual physical contact with blood.
If the apostles said the wine was the blood of Jesus that does not indicate that they had any philosophical explanation like the Catholics do for what this means. It wasn't until Lateran 4 in 1215 AD that the Church forbade the opinion of some that the wine only looked like wine as in an illusion and was actually blood. Instead the Church taught that there is no illusion but the wine is not wine anymore but blood. The wine changes into blood without the smell or taste etc of the wine changing. If Jesus meant that bread is really his body and wine is his blood then he was certainly permitting people to believe in cannibalising him until 1215AD!
* John 20:31 says that the Gospel of John alone is enough for salvation and belief in Jesus. The verse goes, "Jesus did many other miraculous wonders in the presence of his disciples which are not recorded in this book. But I have written of the other signs so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ and the Son of God so that by believing you may have life in his name". In other words, it gives enough evidence for one to base belief on and be saved by that belief coupled with repentance. When John is enough and when John appeals to other scripture as scripture it implies that there is no need for anything outside the Bible. Catholics say this interpretation infers that no Bible book is needed but the gospel of John. The Bible might be sufficient for our salvation but that does not mean that it cannot repeat itself and contain material we don't need for salvation. The Bible being sufficient for salvation does not mean that doctrines such as the virgin birth of Jesus need to be known about for salvation though the Bible teaches the virgin birth doctrine. An inspired book that contains all the basics of the gospel of John can be sufficient. But what about the rest of the Bible? It isn't needed yes but that doesn't mean it is not inspired. It doesn't mean the whole Bible isn't the only word of God and sufficient. The Gospel of John author never says that belief means belief that is acted out as well as just believed. He speaks as if he means mere belief. When that is the case, the gospel teaches salvation by belief alone without good works or sacraments as taught by many at the Protestant Reformation. This proves that the only candidate for being an additional source of the word of God, Catholic tradition, is in fact only the word of man and is to be dismissed. The focus on belief shows that the eating and drinking of Jesus mentioned in John 6 means assimilating Jesus by faith. When you believe you enter into a union with Jesus that is so close that you can use the image that you are eating and drinking him.
You will see from my book, Faith
Only Gospel, that the New Testament teaches that salvation or justification
(being considered good in God’s eyes) is gained by faith alone and not by good
works and good works are only the fruits of being saved not the cause of
salvation or justification. That means
that faith unites you with Christ in the closest possible union and not the
Eucharist. That means the body and blood
of Christ cannot be present in the Eucharist.
That is why evangelicals, believers in salvation by faith alone, teach
either that communion is just a symbolical ceremony or that we feed on Christ
by faith which means that communion is a sign that we renew our faith by which
we received Christ in the closest way.
The Mass denies the gospel doctrine of salvation by faith alone for you
have to do a work and do good works to be fit to receive Christ at
God is spirit and he is goodness and holiness and righteousness and wisdom. It follows then that we can only experience him by his effects. In other words, to worry about eating bodies and gazing up at images to get in the mood for praying is idolatry. John's gospel has Jesus saying to the Samaritan woman that God is spirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth. Jesus told the Samaritan woman that salvation was from the Jews - in the context of God being spirit and truth means that the Jews who adored a God without any material images or mental images were right to do so. He said in John 6 after saying that his body was food and his blood drink that his words were spirit - meaning his intention was to keep the people steered towards the Jewish vision of God. There was no room in his faith for bodies looking like bread or for the worship of idols or the veneration of images.
We conclude that John 6 knows nothing of transubstantiation. Since it comes close to the language of transubstantiation and then excludes it, it is obvious that it is hinting that this miracle cannot happen. Even if the passage seems to teach transubstantiation John might have put down what Jesus said without knowing himself what Jesus was on about. The words might be inspired by God but that does not mean we can understand them. If that is the case then it is seriously wrong to create a Eucharist of Transubstantiation on the words of Jesus in John 6.
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HAVE CATHOLICS JUMPED THE GUN?
Even if John 6 does teach
transubstantiation it still does not help the Catholic Church support it’s
Jesus might have offered us his body and blood under the forms of bread and wine now but he won’t give it to us until we are ready after death so that it makes our bodies immortal. God enables the person to eat this food and drink this blood at the resurrection. The words, “Whoever eats my body and drinks my blood has everlasting life and I will raise him up on the last day,” because of the present tense seem to say we can eat and drink them in this life. But it could be something like, “Whoever finds the fountain of life will live forever” meaning “Whoever finds the fountain of life that I offer now but which you will not be ready for until the resurrection will live forever”. It’s not saying any individual will find it but that it can and will be found. The sentence could be “Whoever eats my body and drinks my blood has everlasting life (and I will raise him up on the last day).” This explains the awkwardness of the bracketed words.
You would wonder what eating Jesus and drinking his blood has to do with rising again. But if you take eating Jesus to mean taking the benefits of his saving death when he sacrificed his body and drinking to mean taking the benefits of his giving his blood it is explained.
So Jesus said, "and I will raise him up on the last day" and added "for my flesh is real food and my blood real drink." Again eating and drinking can't have anything to do with Jesus raising people up.
The Church says Jesus was offering the Jews the Eucharist there and then if they would purify themselves of all sin. If he was then they won’t get it until they rise again as saints fit for Heaven and if they avoid Hell.
When Jesus said that anybody who ate the bread of Moses died and whoever eats his lives it means physical life as well as spiritual life or grace. Physical life seems to be the chief thought or it could be the only thought in the portion that is taken to be about Jesus becoming the Eucharist (v48-58). Even if we say only that it could mean physical life then we are saying we cannot prove that the chapter means transubstantiation. That would prove it could not mean it for it would be clear and would make it impossible to deny if it did. Transubstantiation is an unusual and strange idea. It is a very vague and difficult doctrine. It needs to be taught with extreme clarity. Jesus didn’t say, “God has the power to do anything. He can turn bread into flesh while it remains seeming to be bread.” Without this clarity we cannot assume Jesus taught the doctrine.
Thus there is no evidence in the Bible that Catholics should be offering Mass. John 6 forbids the Mass even if it teaches transubstantiation. It might be that when Jesus said at the last supper that he would not drink the fruit of the vine again until the kingdom of God comes that he was saying that there would be a Eucharist then and none from the time he spoke until then. John might have developed this idea into Jesus doing more than a Eucharist then but also doing a transubstantiation.
NO LAST SUPPER CONNECTION
John is the only gospel that does not have an account of the institution of the Eucharist. This makes many conclude that what John wrote in chapter 6 is about the Eucharist for it is supposed to be too important to be omitted. As if John didn’t leave out a pile of other important stuff! The Gospel of Mark omitted important information on the resurrection so that is not strange for a Christian.
Jesus says in John 6 that we must eat his flesh and drink his blood. At the last supper he says we must eat his body and drink his blood. The former is capable of a crude cannibalistic interpretation. The latter is capable of a transubstantiation interpretation. This may show that the two are not about the same subject.
It is supposed that John 6 is about the Last Supper and proves that Jesus did turn bread into his body and wine into his blood at it. The most important thing is to realise that there is no reason to insist that John 6 is concerned or connected with the last supper at all. The same kind of symbolism can be used for different subjects. For example, Jesus might say eat me over the bread meaning to symbolically eat him and also to accept his saving work on one’s behalf which is also to eat him. It is irresponsible to assume that John 6 is about the Last Supper when Jesus did not clearly say so. Sounding like a certain something is meant does not prove that it is meant.
Lutherans believe that Jesus became physically present everywhere at the ascension but by substance the same way he is present in the Catholic Mass except that creation is not transubstantiated into him. This enables them to hold that we are fed by Jesus all the time if we are open to him and that there is nothing special about the Eucharist except that it is a memorial. If they are correct then there is no reason to connect John 6 and the gospel last supper accounts.
If Jesus really gave his body and blood at the Eucharist to the apostles on the night before he died, then he according to Catholic doctrine, gave them the Father and Son and Holy Spirit in the communion. This contradicts John 7:39 where it is said that no spirit was given until after the glorification of Jesus in the resurrection. This appeared after the flesh and blood discourse of John 6 too! John did not believe that if Jesus gave bread and wine at the last supper that they were his true body and blood.
Here are some appalling arguments for transubstantiation. The Roman Catholic Church believes that Jesus revealed the doctrine in John 6 and it is this we are concerned with now.
* The word for eat in John 6 means chew rather than eat. Sarx the word for flesh and body is physical flesh. Catholics pounce on them as proof that Jesus meant transubstantiation. But strong and physical words can be used in symbolic fashion. Jesus said chew, not eat, my body. Chewing the body of the Lord cannot be more important than eating it so the proof fails. How could Jesus save you by letting you chew his body? Besides, at what point do you become one with Jesus in the Eucharist? Is it when it goes into your tongue, or when it goes down your throat or when you start to turn it into your own body in the stomach? This problem shows the utter absurdity of Roman Catholicism.
* Jesus says that his flesh is real food and his blood is real drink. He means spiritually it is food and drink for he had no interest in feeding our bodies with his body but our souls. Food is anything that nourishes and he means the food for the soul. The soul does not need flesh and blood so he means the soul is fed by the grace of the flesh and blood. You can only take him to mean physical food if you have reason to believe that he was speaking literally for it is not enough on its own and no such reason exists.
Some say that John 6 did not mean the Mass for even if the bread and wine become Christ we do not eat Christ but merely the appearances of bread. We don’t drink his blood but the accidents of wine. Harming the Eucharist does not physically harm Christ. No physical contact is made. When the wafer is in your mouth it is not the body of Christ that touches your tongue but the appearance or accident of bread. But is it right to say that one eats Christ when he is the bread though no physical contact is made? Of course not. To eat Christ you have to assimilate him. But this doesn’t happen in the Eucharist. If bread was put inside a plastic ball and you swallowed the ball does it follow that you ate the bread? You swallowed it but didn’t eat it. John 6 means assimilating the body and blood of Christ spiritually. To take any other meaning is absurd. And if bread is not its appearances or accidents then it follows that even if you have a loaf a day you never ate bread in your life – you only ate its appearances. They nourished you not the bread. The Catholic Church if it really believes in transubstantiation should not be saying you ever hugged your child. It was the appearances of the child you hugged the child is an ethereal substance that you cannot get at or touch. Do you see the utter madness of the Catholic Church?
* It is a fact that in Palestine at the time, the expression, “Eat flesh and drink blood,” meant to do a person grave physical harm. Catholics argue that if the Jews took Jesus’ talk to be figurative that would have been the meaning they would have taken, that Jesus was asking for a violent and bloody destruction. They think it is mad to take Jesus to mean, "If you do me great violence and persecute me to death you will have eternal life and I will raise you up on the last day." But if you take Jesus to mean the crucifixion which is necessary for salvation then there is no problem. It does make sense.
The Jews did not take him to be speaking in a figurative way when they asked how he could give his flesh to eat and let him alone. You don’t ask silly questions like that for if somebody says, “Kill me,” people don’t quibble about what method they will use. They knew that Jesus did not mean what the expression means. Also, 2 Samuel 23:17 records that drinking blood is an expression of gaining benefit from violent death even if it was not the drinker’s fault. So, the expression does not necessarily have to have the connotations that Catholics would like it to have. Had the Jews taken Jesus literally they would not have wondered how he could give his flesh to eat for they would have thought he meant that he would be killed and then be cooked up as food. Incidentally, there are many problems in determining the exacting wording of the New Testament. There has been so much textual corruption. The Christians boast that the corruptions do not affect any doctrine. Yes they do for Jesus promised that heaven and earth would pass away before his words could pass which is a doctrine and he claimed to know the future and to be able to preserve his words. When something could have been omitted from the New Testament that we don’t know of and certainly all the early scholars and copyists thought it had happened when they added in new verses it follows that Jesus was a false prophet. But the point here is that if John is hard to understand the reason might be that a verse was dropped.
* According to Catholics, if Jesus did not mean transubstantiation his disciples who heard his sermon would not have been upset to the degree that they went away and left him when he was finished talking about his flesh and blood being food and drink to them. But these disciples might have understood that Jesus was claiming to be the only way to God. John 6 clearly teaches that there is no salvation without Jesus. The doctrine seemed like egomania to them. They probably thought that he was saying that all Jews had been lost for not being followers of Jesus. The main thought in John 6 is that Jesus is the saviour and there is no salvation without him and the Eucharist itself can have no meaning without him being that.
* In John 6:63, Jesus said that his words which are spirit and life give life for the flesh is useless. Since he had been talking about the refusal of the Jews to believe in him, Catholics say he means that the flesh meaning the person who does not depend on grace or spirit is no good for holiness and union with God. Protestants say he means that his own flesh is useless and that it is the power and grace and spirituality it wins that saves. They reckon that that would be tantamount to a denial of the Catholic Eucharist. They are right because Jesus said the flesh after talking about his own flesh. Now he would have used a term perhaps “your flesh” if he had not meant his own. According to the rules of correct interpretation Jesus said his own flesh could not give life but only the spirit could.
It may be held that even Catholics believe that the flesh of Jesus is useless in itself. It is only the power of God in it that saves. If so, does it mean the verse does not disprove transubstantiation? No for Jesus would not talk as if he had meant the discourse symbolically. He said in the discourse that eating his flesh was necessary and now after he says the flesh is useless. He was not speaking to theologians but to ordinary men who would have understood from this that he was merely saying that what he said before was not to be taken literally. If the Catholics are right then he would have been clearer. He would have made sure we know that he did not intend to imply that the eating flesh was symbolism. He didn't do that so the Protestant interpretation is right. John 6 was written to prevent Christians attempting miracles like transubstantiation. Jesus had asked his hearers if they were insulted by his doctrine of eating flesh and drinking blood and then he says the flesh is useless. He is clearly trying to pacify them and tell them they got it all wrong – he meant you symbolically must eat his body and blood by accepting him as saviour for he will give his body and blood on the cross to forgive sins. It’s a spiritual eating and drinking. Availing of his sacrifice is eating and drinking him. That is all. It's symbolism.
The Holy Spirit is said to be water you can drink in John 7:37-39 and John 3:5 and nobody takes those literally.
Jesus says the words he gave were spirit and they were life (verse 6:63). Words are not literally spirit and life and never can be. Here Jesus was illustrating that he doesn't mean to feed us literally with his body and blood. The words about feeding on Jesus and drinking his blood are said to be spirit and life. A message that gives spirit and life or salvation is a message that is strictly necessary for salvation. Even Catholics admit that the Eucharist in itself is not necessary for salvation. Jesus didn't have to give us the Eucharist.
To recap, the simplest interpretation must leave out the concept of transubstantiation. When he was talking about flesh after saying about his flesh it indicates that he was talking about his own body for to mean any other flesh in that context would be confusing and too oblique. To me the fact that there is no need for the flesh at all is sufficient proof that Jesus was saying that he did not mean his literal flesh would have to be literally eaten and so that he did not mean anything like transubstantiation.
* Jesus said that some can’t believe and wondered what they would do if they saw him ascend into Heaven. Some conclude that he must have taught a conversion of the Eucharist into his body and blood and that was what was so off-putting to those who went away upset vowing to have nothing more to do with Jesus. But that would only prove the conversion if he had already taught it and he certainly had not.
* Protestants often assume that in John 6:27 that they have a proof against the doctrine of transubstantiation. Here, Jesus says the Jews must stop working for the food that decomposes but the food he gives doesn’t and satisfies forever. Since the Eucharist can decompose it cannot be the body and blood of Jesus. But the Catholic replies that says that only the outward appearances of the consecrated things decompose while the inner substance of Christ remains inviolate. But when we have to keep receiving the Eucharist clearly then the Eucharist contradicts the suggestion given by Jesus that his food fills and satisfies forever. The Protestants are right. Jesus has in mind food that gave no permanent benefits or nourishment and criticises it for that and so the Catholic Eucharist which always leaves the recipient in need of a refill is no better.
WHAT IS EATING JESUS AND DRINKING HIS
BLOOD?
What does Jesus mean when he tells us to eat his flesh and drink his blood in John 6?
Let us look at the interpretations.
Some unorthodox Catholics believed that Jesus’ flesh was multiplied when communion was consecrated and it was really Jesus’ meat you sank your teeth into when you ate the wafer and the wafer is an illusion. It was literal cannibalism. God tricks the senses to make you think you are not eating real flesh just to make it palatable. In transubstantiation, God doesn’t use any illusions. The appearance of bread and wine is real but the substance has been changed into the body and blood of Jesus. The bread and wine are exactly the same as before and only what makes them bread and wine is changed. Anybody who believes that John 6 teaches that the bread and wine are the body and blood of Jesus will not be able to refute the full blown cannibalistic doctrine from it. They will have no business claiming that transubstantiation is meant.
Transubstantiation says that the substance of the bread and wine becomes that of Jesus but that there is no other physical change contrary to the previous theory. The cannibalistic theory is a more credible interpretation because the Bible does not teach that a substance can change without there being a physical change.
Even if it could be shown that Jesus literally intended to feed people with his body and his blood the whole of John 6 which seems, at first glance, to record this desire wouldn’t prove transubstantiation. The reformers, Luther and Bucer, held that God could feed us with them without using a material sign to do it, in an invisible way. Catholics object that a substance cannot exist without accidents the appearances of which can be sensed. But it could have imperceptible ones or ones that we just cannot sense like a ghost. And surely if the appearances of bread can do without the substance of bread and have the substance of Jesus instead which is the substance of what is not bread then surely substance can exist by itself without accidents? This is implied by transubstantiation and is universally rejected as absurd for it means you have material that is not material at all so transubstantiation is absurd.
Calvin believed that we eat the body and drink the blood of Jesus spiritually. In other words, we assimilate the graces and benefits that the body and blood of Jesus won for us. When Jesus rose again from the dead this grace was so much in him that it was a part of him so to eat the grace is to eat him. If I have salt as a part of me and that salt is extracted and somebody eats it then that person can be said to be eating me or my flesh though no organic matter is consumed. We eat and drink by faith or commitment to Christ. There is no contact between the soul and the body of Jesus at all but only between the soul and the grace. Jesus certainly believed that his body and blood could not feed without faith. Even those who believe in transubstantiation claim that what they receive is spiritual food. The body is nourished by the appearances of bread and wine but the body and blood feed the soul spiritually meaning they transfer their merits and virtues to the soul for the soul is a mind that is not made of matter and it cannot eat the body of Jesus and drink his blood. So Jesus meant that to eat him is to spiritually absorb the power to be like him in holiness.
It is thought that because Jesus said that anybody who hears him will live because of him like he lives because of the Father that eat stands for have faith in him for he lived by faith in the Father. When he said that he who eats him will live by him in the same way as he lives in the Father he meant living by faith because Jesus’ spiritual life came by faith and so does ours and this faith gives us the presence of God in our hearts. He did live in the Father another way if he was God – the Father and he would have been one being. He did not mean that those who eat him will live by him the way he lives by the Father as in both being divine. He recited Psalms of faith and said they applied to him so Jesus had to live by faith like everybody else even if Jesus was God for he was true man. So eat means believe and open yourself up to God. The result of the nourishing is living in God by faith so faith is the food.
Tradition always said that a sacrament is a symbol that gives what it symbolises.
It said that baptism forgives sins for it represents the forgiveness of sins. But the water does not become the power of God to remove sins. In the same way, the Eucharist may be the body and blood of Christ sacramentally but not actually. In other words, it gives the benefits as if it were the body and blood of Christ which it represents so it is sacramentally the body and blood of Christ but in reality it is just bread and wine. A television program with a personal message from the president for you is not the president himself but it represents the president and is his sacrament to you. It’s exactly the same thing. Even if Jesus said we have to eat his body and drink his blood we do not know if he meant actually or sacramentally. Catholics say it is both which is not necessarily true. And it is quite unlikely that both are meant for the Catholic Eucharist is not a real sacrament for the symbols of Christ are replaced by Christ. A real sacrament is not what it represents but gives what it represents. Catholics like the wily Paul Whitcomb (page 37, Confession of a Roman Catholic) say it is mad to maintain that ordinary bread and wine could give the life of God. That is true if there is no God to pour power into you for eating and drinking. Nobody is saying that ordinary bread and wine can do that. But bread and wine that are literally Jesus can’t do it either. Bread and wine that can do it would need to be the sacramental body and blood of Christ not really the body and blood of Christ.
We see that the Catholic Church
insists that the eating and drinking in the Eucharist of the body and blood of
Jesus is spiritual which we learn from page 11 of the Catholic booklet, Is Jesus Really Present in the Eucharist? After insisting that John 6 speaks of eating
and drinking Jesus in strongly realistic and materialistic ways in calling him
real food and saying we must eat his body and drink his blood like the fathers
fed themselves on manna the booklet goes: “Without in any way undermining the
realism of the Eucharistic reception of Jesus the Gospel emphasises that it is
a spiritual eating of the glorified body and blood of Christ, no longer subject
to the same conditions as his earthly body and blood.
Jesus says in John 6 that people must eat his body and drink his blood to be saved. Now the problem with transubstantiation is this. Both the bread and wine turn into the body and blood and soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. So it is as accurate to call the wafer the blood of Christ as it is to call the wine the body of Christ. It makes no difference what you call them. But Christian tradition has always called the wafer or bread the body and the wine the blood. They meant this symbolically and many later came to mean it literally. You might be your body but it is ridiculous to say that you are your blood. You might as well say that you are your urine or you are the apple you are after eating. When Jesus spoke of himself being our food and then said that we must drink his blood it shows that he was using metaphors. To take them literally makes a farce of his discourse.
He said he was the living bread given to be food for us. The eat body and drink blood stuff indicates that he is dead not alive. This is a clear hint that John 6 does not mean what Roman Catholics say it means.
Conclusion
John 6 does not teach transubstantiation. In fact it declares that to attempt the miracle, to celebrate Mass, is a grave sin and totally opposed to understanding the gospel.
BOOKS CONSULTED
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and
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The Web
Transubstantiation, Is it a True Doctrine?
http://www.geocities.com/christian_apologist2001/