Disclaimer: I do NOT believe in the doctrine of Transubstantiation, wherein the nature (or substance) of bread and wine are changed into the nature/substance of Christ's body and blood and stops being bread and wine. Such a belief smacks of Docetism. I believe that in the Eucharist, the bread remains 100% bread and the wine 100% wine, yet at the same time they are 100% Christ's body and 100% Christ's blood. No transubstantiation has taken place, nor are the elements 50% bread/wine and 50% flesh/blood as is taught in the doctrine of consubstantiation.
THE FEEDING OF THE FIVE
THOUSAND AND THE EUCHARIST
A Miracle of Multiplication, or a “Miracle” of
“Sharing”?
Surely all those people
who came to hear Jesus brought some food for their journey. They certainly
wouldn’t have walked all that way without taking food for their trip. But it
may be that none of them wanted to share what he had.
It may therefore be that
Jesus, with his ability to draw the best from people, produced the five loaves
and fish his disciples gave him, and simply began sharing it with those around
him. Perhaps, seeing this, everyone who had something began doing the same,
until eventually everyone was sharing what they were earlier hoarding. In the
end, there was more than enough for everyone.
It may be that this is a
miracle in which Jesus was able to change a group selfish people into a
community of sharers. It may be that this story represents the biggest miracle
of all—one that didn’t only change loaves and fishes, but the hearts of men and
women.[1]
There
are many that say that the miracle here is not a miracle of multiplication, but
a miracle of “sharing”, but although it is alleged that the "miracle"
in the feeding of the five thousand is merely the miracle of
"sharing", (when they saw a little boy share his food, the rest of
the people were shamed into sharing the food they hid for themselves,) we
should consider the feeding of the five thousand not as a "miracle"
of "sharing" but as a true literal event wherein five loaves and two
fish literally were multiplied by Christ to feed more than five thousand for
two main reasons.
First,
a group of people cannot hide that much food that will leave left-overs in
twelve baskets. If there was enough food to leave that many left-overs, then
Christ and his disciples would not have been fooled into believing that the
people had no food whatsoever. But most importantly, all four Gospel accounts
tell us that the people had NO FOOD, and that is why Christ HAD to feed them. Let
us remember that the people to whome Christ preached were mostly POOR who had no
food to bring even if they wanted to. Those of us who had to work with the poor
and under-privileged know for a fact that whether urban poor or rural folk they
had to be fed when they come to church.
There
is no suggestion WHATSOEVER in any of the four Gospels that the people actually
hid their food and were moved to share because a little boy shared his. This
assumes that the Gospel writers were not at all honest in describing the event.
Now unless one is a dedicated liberal theologian, there would be no problem regarding
the historical reliability of the Gospel accounts. What bugs me are people who
supposedly believe in the divine inspiration of the Gospels and yet hold on to
a naturalistic explanation, or rather, explaining away of a miracle.
In
the same way, many say that the Sacrament of Holy Communion merely as a
symbolic remembrance of Christ’s work on the cross, but even though it is
alleged that the "ordinance" of Holy Communion is merely a symbol
wherein we remember what Christ did for us, (and since we can remember Christ
by any means, Holy Communion is perceived as not really necessary,) we must
realize that “those seeking to live as Christian disciples have constant need
of the nourishment and sustenance made available through both the Word and the
sacrament of Holy Communion,” and thus, “congregations of The United Methodist
Church” should “move toward a richer sacramental life, including weekly
celebration of the Lord’s Supper at the services on the Lord’s Day, as
advocated by the general orders of Sunday worship in The United Methodist Hymnal and The
United Methodist Book of Worship” because the apostle S. Paul that it is
through the breaking of bread and the partaking thereof that unites us in the
body of Christ and the cup of blessing is how the blood of Christ is conveyed
to believers. This is important because S. Paul directly relates to the words
of our Lord Jesus Christ himself when he said that “Those who eat my flesh and
drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day” (S.
John 6:54).[2]
In
other words, once saved is NOT always saved, and salvation has to be
maintained, not by our own works but by grace through faith conveyed by the
means of grace, of which the sacrament of Holy Communion is the chief.
Remembering the Work of Christ Apart From the
Eucharist
Of
course, many even in the United Methodist Church think that Holy Communion is
but just a symbol because they take in isolation Christ’s words, “Do this in
remembrance of me” and so for many of them that is the most important part, not
the breaking of bread and the blessing of wine. And since one can remember or
be reminded of Christ and his work on the cross even without bread and wine,
then Holy Communion is not really that essential. Once a month is already perceived
as so frequent (even too frequent), some even saying that Holy Communion should
only be done once a year every Holy Thursday. I am well aware of this argument
as I used to hold this very notion, even when I finished my Master of Divinity
thesis and even suggested a liturgy applicable only every Maundy Thursday.
Then
there is that notion that S. John 6:53ff do not refer at all to the elements of
Holy Communion but to the written Word of God, i.e., the Holy Scriptures.
Christ, the true bread,
only gives life, which is conveyed by the word, and made effectual by the
Spirit: … The "flesh" and "blood" of Christ do not design
those distinct parts of his body; much less as separate from each other; nor
the whole body of Christ, but his whole human nature; or Christ, as having
united a perfect human nature to him, in order to shed his blood for the
remission of sin, and to offer up his soul and body a sacrifice for it: and the
eating of these is not to be understood of a corporeal eating of them, as the
Capernaites understood them; and since them the Papists, who affirm, that the
bread and wine in the Lord's supper are transubstantiated into the very body
and blood of Christ, and so eaten: but this is not to be understood of eating
and drinking in the Lord's supper, which, as yet, was not instituted; … But the
words design a spiritual eating of Christ by faith. To eat the flesh, and drink
the blood of Christ, is to believe that Christ is come in the flesh, and is
truly and really man; that his flesh is given for the life of his people, and
his blood is shed for their sins, and this with some view and application to
themselves: … and such a feeding upon him as is attended with growth in grace,
and in the knowledge of him, and
is daily to be repeated, as our corporeal food is, otherwise persons have no
life in them: without this there, is no evidence of life in them; … Now, though
the acts of eating and drinking do not give the right to eternal life, but the
flesh, blood, and righteousness of Christ, which faith lays hold, and feeds
upon; yet it is by faith the right is claimed; and between these acts of faith,
and eternal life, there is an inseparable connection.[3]
In
short, eating flesh of Christ and drinking his blood means no more than
believing that Christ came in the flesh and trusting in the atoning work of
Christ’s death. Thus, the “ordinance” of the Lord’s Table is not really
necessary, but is just a symbol of one’s faith in the incarnate Word of God and
trust in Christ’s atoning death. The appeal of this notion to intellectuals,
individualists and those dismayed by the perceived corruption of the organized
church is that it makes salvation directly available (without the mediation of
an organization, i.e., the Church) according to one’s understanding and
acceptance of the “knowledge” of Christ.
These
same intellectual individualists reject the notion that any saving grace can be
conveyed at all by physical means, whether through baptismal water or the
elements of bread and wine. Grace is held to be conveyed solely by the mental
process of faith, with the “ordinances” of Baptism and the Lord’s Table symbols
of spiritual realities.
The Theologically Liberal Interpretations of
“Conservative Evangelicals”
A theology which denies
the historicity of nearly everything in the Gospels to which Christian life and
affections and thought have been fastened for nearly two millennia - which
either denies the miraculous altogether or, more strangely, after swallowing
the camel of the Resurrection strains at such gnats as the feeding of the
multitudes - if offered to the uneducated man can produce only one or other of
two effects. It will make him a Roman Catholic or an atheist.
I find in these
theologians a constant use of the principle that the miraculous does not occur.[4]
Truly,
how weird is it when one accepts that Christ did truly die, rise to life, and
ascend into heaven, and NOT believe that Christ was born of a virgin,
transformed water into wine, multiplied five loaves to feed more than five
thousand, walked on water, and is more than capable of giving his own flesh and
blood for people to eat.
So
some argue that it is contrary to nature for bread to be so multiplied that
five loaves can feed five hundred, so others argue that it is contrary to
nature for Christ’s flesh and blood occupy many places at the same time. For
they say that is to attribute divine characteristics to Christ’s human nature,
which though united with his divine nature is entirely differentiated. So, it
is not “natural” for human flesh and blood to be present in bread and wine:
neither is it “natural” for a human body to walk on water or to raise to life
after it had been killed.
Christ’s
human body even before his death was already capable of things normally
considered impossible: why is it so hard to believe that the same Christ who
multiplied five loaves cannot in the same way multiply his own flesh and blood
and give them to be eaten as bread and wine? Unless one does not believe the
feeding of the five thousand was a miracle of multiplication but a “miracle[?]
of ‘sharing’”. Alec Vidler said in one of his Windsor Sermons that “the Fourth gospel does not call [the feeding
of the five thousand] a 'miracle' . . . but a ‘sign’. It should be read more as
a parable than as a miracle.” If the Eucharist is similarly a sign, a symbol,
is it then too a parable?
And
this is what I find inconsistent from supposed conservative evangelicals who
believe in the virgin birth, turning water into wine, and the multiplication of
the loaves, yet when confronted with the words, “This is my body” and “This is
my blood” interpret them like any liberal theologian—with rationalistic
naturalism and not with Scripture.
When
we do turn to Scripture to answer the question, “How can Christ give us his
flesh to eat and his blood to drink?” we are confronted with the words of the
apostle S. Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:16,
The cup of blessing
which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which
we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?
So,
how do we eat Christ’s flesh? Through the bread broken in remembrance of
Christ. How do we drink Christ’s blood? Through the cup of blessing in
remembrance of Christ. These are THE Scriptural answers. S. John 6:53-54 is
interpreted in the light of 1 Corinthians 10:16. That’s the only interpretation
available in Scripture.
“But
when Christ said those words, the Lord’s Supper was not yet instituted, and so
it is out of context to relate these words to the Lord’s Supper.” But how does
one know that the words of 6:53ff does not constitute a prediction of the
institution of the Lord’s Supper at the Last Supper? For if S. John 3:14-15 is
an implicit prediction of the crucifixion of Christ, then 6:53ff is similarly
an implicit prediction of the Lord’s Supper.
Besides,
Christ already, by the time he had said these words, already instituted the
Eucharist—during the feeding of the five thousand when he gave thanks
(eucharisteo) and multiplied the five loaves to feed more than five thousand
when “the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was nigh.” What if the Lord’s Supper
was instituted to remind his disciples of the institution of the Eucharist
about a year or so before, and to have them remember what Christ said about his
being the bread of life? Indeed, Christ’s words, “This is my body,” would have
been the long awaited answer to the much debated question at Capernaum, “How
can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
Trying To Be More Spiritual Than God
There are three things
that spread the Christ life to us: baptism, belief, and that mysterious action which
different Christians call by different names—Holy Communion, the Mass, the
Lord's Supper. At least, those are the three ordinary methods.[5]
It
is most important for us to realize that “those seeking to live as Christian
disciples have constant need of the nourishment and sustenance made available through
both the Word and the sacrament of Holy Communion,” and thus, weekly
celebration of the Lord’s Supper every Sunday at the least is not only
desirable but necessary, because of the promise of Christ that “Those who eat
my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the
last day” (S. John 6:54).
But,
as shown previously, this flies in the face of any naturalistic rationalism
that supposed “evangelical conservatives” actually use in interpreting
Scripture.
… nothing is more
contrary to nature than to derive the spiritual and heavenly life of the soul
from flesh, which received its origin from the earth, and was subjected to
death, nothing more incredible than that things separated by the whole space
between heaven and earth should, notwithstanding of the long distance, not only
be connected, but united, so that souls receive aliment from the flesh of
Christ.[6]
In
other words, the only means of grace is the “spiritual” act of faith, i.e., the
mental act of belief. But the only way one can arrive at this conclusion is to
presuppose a sort of dualism wherein physical and spiritual matter are so
utterly divorced.
… this new life is
spread not only by purely mental acts like belief, but by bodily acts like baptism
and Holy Communion. … There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God.
God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses
material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think
this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes
matter. He invented it.[7]
As
offensive as it may sound to modern Pharisees that Christ uses physical matter
like bread and wine to impart spiritual life into people, this is EXACTLY what
Christ was saying explicitly, that “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood
have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day”. Taken at face
value, Christ did say eternal life and the guarantee of being resurrected among
the righteous is conveyed by the eating of Christ’s flesh and the drinking of
his blood. There is no going around this unless one begs the question with theologically
liberal presuppositions.
And
even if the “flesh and blood” was not intended to be literal but symbolic—(despite
the fact that Christ NEVER said, “those who symbolically
eat my flesh and symbolically drink
my blood”), the fact remains that eating Christ’s flesh and drinking his blood
is necessary to receive eternal life.
And
so, how do we “symbolically” eat Christ’s flesh and “symbolically” drink his
blood? By knowing that Christ came in
the flesh and knowing that he died to
save sinners? Devils know that too, and they tremble, remaining devils still.
By accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as personal savior? And how do we do that? By
praying a sinners’ prayer and knowing
that he died for you? Or, is reading the Bible every day how we eat Christ’s
flesh? Already, the Scripture reading is called “our daily bread”: is praying
therefore how we drink Christ’s blood? Or is blood another “symbol” of the
Spirit?[8]
The
Scriptures actually give us the answer: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is
it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it
not the communion of the body of Christ?” We eat Christ flesh through broken
bread and we drink Christ’s blood through blessed wine. The Scriptures
themselves offer no other explanation that what the apostle S. Paul already wrote.
That is why the early New Testament Church celebrated the breaking of bread—the
Eucharist—every day (Acts 2:42ff), because the hope of eternal life and
assurance of forgiveness and salvation was and still is received through this
sacrament.
Once Saved is NOT Always Saved: Why the
Eucharist is Necessary
Your natural life is
derived from your parents; that does not mean it will stay there if you do
nothing about it. You can lose it by neglect, or you can drive it away by
committing suicide. You have to feed it and look after it: but always remember
you are not making it, you are only keeping up a life you got from someone
else. In the same way a Christian can lose the Christ-life which has been put
into him, and he has to make efforts to keep it. But even the best Christian
that ever lived is not acting on his own steam—he is only nourishing or
protecting a life he could never have acquired by his own efforts. And that has
practical consequences.[9]
And
so, even if it is granted that the Eucharist is “just a symbol” it must be realized
that “those seeking to live as Christian disciples have constant need of the
nourishment and sustenance made available through both the Word and the sacrament
of Holy Communion,” and thus, we should “move toward a richer sacramental life,
including weekly celebration of the Lord’s Supper at the services on the Lord’s
Day” for two main points. First, our Lord Jesus Christ himself said that “Those
who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up
on the last day.” Secondly and significantly, the apostle Paul writes that the
breaking of bread is the means we receive Christ’s flesh and the blessing of
the cup of wine the means by which we receive the blood of Christ. In other
words, whether real or symbolic, the sacrament of Holy Communion is a necessary
means whereby we receive eternal life.
The grace of God given
herein confirms to us the pardon of our sins and enables us to leave them. As
our bodies are strengthened by bread and wine, so are our souls by these tokens
of the body and the blood of Christ. This is the food of our souls: This gives
strength to perform our duty, and leads us on to perfection. If, therefore, we
have any regard for the plain command of Christ, if we desire the pardon of our
sins, if we wish for strength to believe, to love and obey God, then we should
neglect no opportunity of receiving the Lord’s Supper; then we must never turn
our backs on the feast which our Lord has prepared for us.[10]
The
reason why constant communion is a necessary duty is because we humans cannot
preserve our own eternal lives—Christ has to do it for us. We may have received
eternal life the moment we believed, but we can lose that life eternal if we
fail to maintain it, fail to feed it. And the means whereby the eternal lives given
us is maintained is through the sacrament of Holy Communion.
If
one rejects the notion that eternal life can be lost, then yes, Holy Communion
is not only unnecessary but actually irrelevant, valuable only as a reminder of
past events, a visual aid on the same level as a video of Jesus of Nazareth and The
Passion of the Christ. In fact, maybe a movie about Christ is a better
means of “remembering” Christ if the Eucharist is just a symbol and once saved
is always saved.
However,
if once saved is NOT always saved, and one can definitely lose the eternal life
one has once gained, then the sacrament of Holy Communion is not only
important, but absolutely essential to maintaining that eternal life which
Christ gave to us on the cross and to progressing towards spiritual maturity.
Now,
at this point one may ask that as long as grace is received in the Eucharist,
does it matter whether Christ’s real flesh and real blood is really present in
the elements of bread and wine. For even if they were mere symbols, and no real
eating of Christ’s flesh and drinking his blood, as long as those who partake
of it receive grace, right? That is like saying that the feeding of the five
thousand needed not have been a miraculous multiplication of five loaves, but
merely an act of sharing, which is in itself “a miracle in which Jesus was able
to change a group selfish people into a community of sharers. It may be that
this story represents the biggest miracle of all—one that didn’t only change
loaves and fishes, but the hearts of men and women.” This explanation satisfies
the naturalistic assumptions of this present age. But if the feeding of the
five thousand was just about getting people to share their food, then it does
not really deserve to be called a miracle, and the Gospels that record the
event are less than honest, if not outright lies. In the same way, if bread and
wine are just symbols, then there is no reason to suppose that these physical
elements can really convey spiritual grace, unless one redefines grace as well.
Miracles
have been redefined in this naturalistic world so as to utterly remove the
supernatural and make them merely unusual yet natural events. In the same way,
grace has been redefined not as spiritual energy but as an emotional high.
Salvation is no longer the object of the Lord’s Supper, but entertainment.
However,
if Christ can truly turn water into wine, and can miraculously feed five
thousand with five loaves of bread, then this same Christ can convey to us his
flesh and blood through the elements of bread and wine, so that eating his
flesh and drinking his blood we may continue to have the eternal life Christ
died to give to us.
“… when Christians say
the Christ-life is in them, they do not mean simply something mental or moral.
When they speak of being "in Christ" or of Christ being "in
them," this is not simply a way of saying that they are thinking about
Christ or copying Him. They mean that Christ is actually operating through
them; that the whole mass of Christians are the physical organism through which
Christ acts—that we are. … It explains why this new life is spread not only by
purely mental acts like belief, but by bodily acts like baptism and Holy
Communion.” –C. S. Lewis
[1] “The
Feeding of the Five Thousand and the Miracle of Sharing,” CATHOLIC
WEBPHILOSOPHER (Wednesday, December 1, 2010). Retrieved August 4, 2014, from http://www.catholicwebphilosopher.com/2010/12/feeding-of-five-thousand-and-miracle-of.html.
[2]
Resolution 8014—This Holy Mystery: A
United Methodist Understanding of Holy Communion, 2004, re-adopted during
the 2012 General Conference of the UMC
at Tampa, Florida.
[3] John
Gill, “John vi. 35, 53,” An Exposition of
the New Testament, emphasis added.
[4] C.S.
Lewis, “Fern-seed and Elephants,” in response to Alec Vidler on the feeding of
the five thousand, “Quite incredible that we should have had to wait nearly
2000 years to be told by a theologian called Dr Alec Vidler that what the
church has always regarded as a miracle was, in fact a parable.”
[5]
C.S. Lewis, “The Practical Conclusion,” Mere
Christianity.
[6]
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian
Religion, Book 4, Chapter 17:24.
[7] C.S.
Lewis, Ibid.
[8] I am
beginning to suspect that the notion of the Eucharist being just a “symbol” is
a survival of Gnosticism with its extreme dualism and disdain of physical
matter. Indeed, the thought that the physical and the spiritual are so utterly
divorced that physical matter is held to be incapable of conveying spiritual
grace has such Gnostic overtones that I suspect that most modern
neo-evangelicalism with its emphases on intellectualistic individualism and creedalistic “evangelism” (“Do you know
what Christ did for you?”) is actually neo-Gnosticism. And this is the reason
why I can NEVER become a Baptist, whose doctrines have such a strong flavor of
Gnosticism and whose polity hearkens back to the Nicolaitans, “victory of the
people”.
[9]
Op. cit.
[10]
John Wesley, Sermon 101: The Duty of
Constant Communion.
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