Christ Ascended Into Heaven

[cmotherofpirl]

:notworthy:

[Adeodatus]

Awwww, cmom! Flattery WILL get you everywhere!!!!!

But before anyone else does this, can I just say that I am your biggest fan! I loved your line "Sacred tradition hands on in its full purity God's Word". Marvellous in its conciseness. True genius! Your Herculean efforts on this phorum are amazing.

Just thought I'd let you know! :D

[ICTHUS]

Awwww, cmom!   Flattery WILL get you everywhere!!!!!

But before anyone else does this, can I just say that I am your biggest fan!  I loved your line "Sacred tradition hands on in its full purity God's Word".  Marvellous in its conciseness.  True genius!  Your Herculean efforts on this phorum are amazing.

Just thought I'd let you know! :D

Actually, Adeodatus, could you start that thread on Divine Revelation for me?

It seemed as though Cmom was saying that the Scriptures were somehow impure and needed Tradition to pass them on in full purity.

And thank you for the thingo on Chalcedon. It was very helpful inDouche.

Edited December 14, 2003 by ICTHUS

[Adeodatus]

Icthus, you're welcome! I'd love to start that thread on Scripture for you..... but (alas! there's always a 'but') I'm going to be sooooooo busy this week. I will get down to it the minute another gap (timewise) opens for me. Do you reckon that the quote from Cmom is a good place to start?

God bless! Peace.......

[cmotherofpirl]

Actually, Adeodatus, could you start that thread on Divine Revelation for me?

It seemed as though Cmom was saying that the Scriptures were somehow impure and needed Tradition to pass them on in full purity.

And thank you for the thingo on Chalcedon. It was very

helpful inDouche.

Scripture is not impure in ANY way.

Scripture however does not stand alone. It it a product of the Church, who chose what books were accepted into canon and which ones were excluded. This choice was based on God's inspiration to choose which books were linked to Apostles and conformed with already existing oral Church teaching. THe Church is older by about 390 years, than the canon of Scripture.

Scripture is also not self-interpreting, or a sole rule of faith. It is a set of Catholic documents, that are interpreted by Catholics. It is not a do it yourself manual ,

sincere people have been this approach for about 500 years and we have about 30,00 different groups as a result.

THank you for the compliment, but the quote is not from me. I am not that good. I have a simple mind so I try to make things as simple as possible. .

I deal with kids in my home and youth group, and I have discovered that the KISS works well." Keep It Simple, Silly!" All the detailed stuff can be answered by scholars like yourself.

[ICTHUS]

Icthus, you're welcome!  I'd love to start that thread on Scripture for you..... but (alas! there's always a 'but') I'm going to be sooooooo busy this week.  I will get down to it the minute another gap (timewise) opens for me.  Do you reckon that the quote from Cmom is a good place to start?

God bless!  Peace.......

By the way, Adeodatus...are you a seminarian??

[Adeodatus]

Icthus, good guess! Yes, I am---of a certain kind. Seminarians train to become diocesan priests, but I belong to a religious order. My priestly ordination is around July next year.

[ICTHUS]

Icthus, good guess!  Yes, I am---of a certain kind.  Seminarians train to become diocesan priests, but I belong to a religious order.  My priestly ordination is around July next year.

*takes another wild guess*

Are you Augustinian?

[Trooper4DaHolyG]

So, consider the Eucharist.  Is Jesus’s natural and glorified human nature (body and soul) now at the right hand of God the Father in heaven?  Yes.  So is Jesus’s Body in heaven?  Yes.  In that case, how can the Eucharist be His Body too?

This, I think, is the nub of your question.  You think the real, natural body of Jesus is in heaven, and so it can’t also be in the Eucharist simultaneously.  Therefore, you conclude, the ‘Body of Christ’ in the Eucharist is more like a ‘spiritual presence’.  I think this is the line of your reasoning, and I can see why you say that.

In her beliefs about the Eucharist, the Catholic Church is constrained by the Scriptures.  Jesus said, ‘This is my Body’.  He didn’t say, ‘This looks like my body’, or ‘This feels like my body’, or ‘This is special bread through which I will come to you spiritually’.  So we have to confess that the Eucharist IS TRULY Christ’s Body.  But how can it be His Body when His Body is in heaven?

The Church would say that Christ’s body in its natural mode (i.e. the same body which suffered, died, was buried, rose again glorified, appeared to the apostles, and ascended into heaven) is in heaven at the right hand of the Father.  The Eucharist is the very SAME Body of Christ but ‘per modum sacramentum’ (present sacramentally, or present in the mode of a sacrament). So there is only one Body of Christ.  It is present in its natural mode as glorified in heaven.  But it is present sacramentally, whole and entire, in the Eucharist----in every consecrated wafer, crumb, fragment.  The whole Christ is present in each morsel.

This is a spiritual presence of Christ.  But it is also MORE than a spiritual presence.  It is a REAL and sacramental presence.  When we receive the host, we truly receive the body of Christ, and along with the body, the blood, soul and divinity of Christ.  When we drink from the chalice, we truly receive the blood of Christ, and along with the blood, the body, soul and divinity of Christ.  We truly eat and drink the WHOLE Christ.  We call this a sacramental eating and drinking of Christ, because eating and drinking the Eucharist does not cause Christ’s body and blood in heaven to diminish. 

This is very different from the Calvinist notion of a MERE spiritual presence of Christ.  A purely spiritual presence of Christ would not necessarily linger, so after communion you could just store away or throw away the remaining bread and wine.  But the sacramental presence is one which endures.  The bread and wine do not stop being Christ’s body and blood until they lose the appearances of bread and wine, e.g. when the Eucharist is digested in us.

Icthus, I think we also need to distinguish the different meanings of the word ‘presence’, or the different ways in which a thing can be ‘present’.  In one sense, God is present everywhere.  He is in everything in the sense that He is holding all things which exist in existence.  God is also spiritually present in every heart which seeks him.  He is even more spiritually present in the hearts of those who have been baptised and made a new creation in Him.  But a spiritual presence, no matter how great, is not the same thing as the real, sacramental presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

That’s what we mean by ‘transubstantiation’---that the consecrated bread and wine are truly the Body and Blood of Christ.  It’s not about how it happens, because that is a mystery of God, but about the fact that it does happen. 

I want to suggest that everything Protestants affirm positively about the Eucharist is true, but NOT the whole truth.  For example, (1) the Eucharist is a symbol.  True, but it’s also more than a symbol.  It’s a sacrament: a symbol which effects what it signifies, i.e. it symbolises Christ’s body and blood, and it makes present Christ’s body and blood.  Or, (2) the Eucharist is a spiritual presence of Christ.  Absolutely!  But this spiritual presence comes to us through the sacramental transformation (i.e. transubstantiation) of the bread and wine into the REAL body and blood of Christ.

Icthus, you also mentioned another issue about the Bible.  I won’t say anything on that here, because my post is long enough!  But could it move to another thread….?

*this POST is directed to Adeodatus*

If Protestants believe that Communion,as we call it, s a symbolic act with real

results (not symbolic results), how do our definitions of partaking of Jesus's body and blood differ?

Also when you say the 'Church would say' is that the offical stance, or what you believe with strong convictions? (this is not meant to be a direct attack or with any hint of sarcasm! You have no idea how curious I am about all of this!)

transubstantiation in its very definition, does it not mean that Christ is brought back down to transform into the bread and the wine? hhmmmmm, there probably is no easy explanation right? :rolling: :sadder:

Edited December 15, 2003 by Trooper4DaHolyG

[Donna]

To confirm what Adeodatus has written:

From the Denzinger, Sources of Catholic Dogma; Council of Trent, # 874 (my epmphasis):

"For these things are not mutually contadictory, that

Our Savior Himself is always seated at the right hand of the Father in Heaven

according to the natural mode of existing, and yet that in many other places

sacramentally He is present to us in His own substance by

that manner of existence which...by our understanding

illuminated by faith, conceive to be possible to God..."

Trooper, you may find your answer here as well?

[Donna]

Icthus, just an aside to an earlier page in this thread, regarding the I Cor. verses ("shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord"), should also be added that following this passages is written,

"For he that eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks

judgement to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord."

[Adeodatus]

Donna, thank you for your posts. That quote from the Council of Trent is just beautiful! BTW I am praying for your good health. God bless you.

Icthus, no I'm not an Augustinian. Well, in a certain sense, maybe........ Not trying to be cryptic, but I must keep a certain anonymity.

Trooper4DaHolyG, good question! I think this is the heart of the whole matter that you've put your finger on.

Put it like this: there's a start, a middle and an end regarding the Eucharist.

At the start, Catholics and Calvinists would look at the Eucharist and both would say, 'It's a symbol.'

At the end, Catholics and Calvinists would say about receiving Holy Communion, 'The effect is receiving the Body of Christ'.

Looks pretty similar doesn't it? Well, what would they do in the middle? If we pointed at the Eucharist and asked 'What is that?' what would both groups have to say?

A Calvinist would still be on the symbolical level. The Eucharist is a symbol, and eating it brings us spiritually in communion with Christ, but at the end of the day the Eucharist is just bread, special bread maybe, but just bread.

A Catholic would have to look at the Eucharist and say, 'This is Christ's Body'.

The reason Catholics do that is because of the Bible. The sheer force of Christ's declaration, 'This is my Body', and the fact that the early Christians and Church Fathers understood the Eucharist to be Christ's Body compel us to this understanding of the Eucharist.

Donna quoted that passage from 1 Cortinthians: "For he that eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks judgement to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord." A person is held 'guilty of the body of the Lord' for not discerning it to be the Body of the Lord. It is like the old crime of 'lese majeste'--- a slight against the person of the Monarch, in this case King Jesus.

Let me explain.

Now I, while languishing with flu this week and trying to clear my desk and get semi-organised, found an old crucifix given to me under a pile of papers and books. It's an old 19th century crucifix you're meant to clutch while you're dying (I should have held it closer during this wreteched illness!). So in a way, through my carelessness in letting this crucifix get buried under a pile of work, I have slighted the body of the Lord. But it is not the case that I did not 'discern the body of the Lord'---because the crucifix is a symbol of that body, but ONLY a symbol.

Now imagine (and God forbid this should ever happen) that I received communion, but willfully, knowingly thought, 'It's just a symbol.' In this case I WOULD be guilty of 'not discerning the body of the Lord'. Why? Because the Eucharist is more than a symbol of the Body of the Lord. It IS the Body of the Lord. That's the difference between the Catholic idea of 'transubstantiation' and alternative Protestant ideas.

Trooper, you also asked "transubstantiation in its very definition, does it not mean that Christ is brought back down to transform into the bread and the wine?" Let me answer you this way (the most important point is no. 6):

1. It is certainly Christ who does the action of transubstantiation, through the priest.

2. Christ does not 'come back down' in his glorified body. In a way, He never left because He acts through His Church. But in His natural body He is in heaven. In the Eucharist, that same body is made present to us sacramentally (i.e. in a way we don't understand, but is real nonetheless).

3. Christ himself isn't transformed into bread and wine.

4. The gifts of bread and wine are transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ.

5. Transubstantiation is NOT a second incarnation. There is only ONE incarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ. If it were an 'incarnation', then the bread and wine would still be bread and wine, although united to Christ.

6. In essence, transubstantiation means that the bread and wine have truly become the Body and Blood of Christ. They are no longer bread and wine even if the appearances are otherwise. Transubstantiation does not explain HOW this happens. But it does affirm THAT it happens.

Trooper, I hope I've made things clearer for you, and not muddied the waters even more........! Peace.......

[foundsheep]

*this POST is directed to Adeodatus*

If Protestants believe that Communion,as we call it, s a symbolic act with real

results (not symbolic results), how do our definitions of partaking of Jesus's body and blood differ?

Also when you say the 'Church would say' is that the offical stance, or what you believe with strong convictions? (this is not meant to be a direct attack or with any hint of sarcasm! You have no idea how curious I am about all of this!)

transubstantiation in its very definition, does it not mean that Christ is brought back down to transform into the bread and the wine? hhmmmmm, there probably is no easy explanation right? :rolling: :sadder:

Another way to Look at it is,when the bread never goes stale in the church. If it does(by chance) we dont just chuck it in the trash. Once its blessed, it is He.

[ICTHUS]

Once its blessed, it is He.

"Dost ask, Who this may be? Christ Jesus, it is He!" - Martin Luther "A Mighty Fortress is our God"

[p0lar_bear]

ICTHUS,

Do you think your question on this has been answered or do you still need more?

Just trying to catch up....