Right, and he meant what he said with "Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother." The “is” used there is the very same “is” used with “is my body”. Do you claim that he must be understood literally then as well?
How does this suggest transubstantiation? When Paul spoke of the body in this passage it is the Church that Paul had in mind. Note that it is whoever eats and drinks without discerning the body….and it isn’t whoever eats without discerning the body and whoever drinks without discerning the blood. Paul wants the participant to discern the body and didn’t require the participant to discern the blood. The “body” that Paul is concerned with here is the same body that he is concerned with at both the start and end of this passage. It is the metaphorical body, namely the Church. It is the Church that was being despised (v. 22) and not being discerned…..and the remedy that Paul provides is for the hungry to eat at home so that they can wait and all eat together….so that none are humiliated and the Church is not despised. That remedy solved the problem because “the body” was the Church. It would not have solved the problem if “the body” was the one that hung on the cross.
I realize that you can’t see it, but the fact that they were in the middle of a meal where the elements of the meal act as symbols of the Passover event provides an extremely appropriate context for a figurative understanding. There was no context or precedent for a person holding (what still looks like) a piece of bread and saying “"Take, eat; this is my body" and meaning that a transformation of substances had occurred whilst the accidents remained unchanged.
and yet not one of the synoptic gospels contains the bread of life discourse even though (according to you) it is the necessary context for the last supper (described at Matthew 26, Mark 14, and Luke 22)….and, of course the Last Supper isn’t described in John. I find your claim (regarding the proper context) doesn’t pass the smell test.
you will find Strong’s G228 (“true”) used in John 15:1
1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.
Strong’s G228 and Strong’s G230 both trace their origin to Strong’s G227 (truly) ….unless you want to assert that Jesus is truly (not figuratively) a vine, then you must abandon this declaration that Strong’s G230/indeed cannot be used in a metaphor.
I do not think that the biblical uses that you provided are all metaphors. Psalms 27:2 is (where eating = destroying) but the rest seem to be more hyperbole where they (the people under consideration) are so hungry that they will eat their own flesh or are so evil that they will eat the flesh of others. In any event, a few (at most) varied uses of eating as a negative metaphor does not prevent Jesus from using eating his flesh as a metaphor for belief in him. The context of the bread of life discourse is not Psalms 27:2 or any of the other verses that you listed. The context is the feeding of the 5 thousand and the manna that gave temporary life to the Israelites. In that context and after Jesus identifies himself as the bread of eternal life and after he has declared that the bread of life must be eaten, how is he prevented from using “eating his flesh” as a metaphor for belief in him and the sacrifice of his flesh on the cross for the salvation of the world?
Again, no Catholic literally eats his flesh…the accidents aren’t present to be chewed
I wouldn’t blame God for transubstantiation, and I wouldn’t dismiss it as repugnant, but I would dismiss it as nonsensical. As you say, the essence of an accident is to exist in a substance. To claim that the substance of a body (the body being a physical thing) is present without any proper accidents being physically present is (to me) a nonsensical claim. It is the presence of accidents that gives rise to the presence of a physical substance such as a body. One could hold the idea of a body in one’s mind (without any accidents present), but one can’t have a physical thing present without accidents being present. To claim that the body is “present” is to render that term meaningless. To claim that the substance of the bread is gone when the accidents are still physically there and unchanged, is again (to me) a nonsensical claim. Catholics claim a supernatural intervention, but even an all-powerful God can’t make square circles and can’t create the conditions required by the claim of transubstantiation (as those conditions IMHO amount to an absurdity). Further, I am not sure that a supernatural intervention is even necessary for the claim of transubstantiation in today’s world. It would seem that a person, (who is in substance a woman), can decide to renounce that substance and adopt the substance of a man without the need for any physical change to take place. Shall I, based on nothing more than the declaration of that person agree that, under the species of a female body, a man is present in a true, real, and substantial manner? No, accidents matter and determine the presence or absence of the substance in which they exist.
Please allow me to conclude by saying that what troubles me the most about this issue is not that Mungo and I disagree on our understandings of Jesus’s (and Paul’s) words on this matter. What bothers me is the division that has resulted in Christianity because of the various possible interpretations. I don’t doubt for a second that Mungo’s position is held by him/her because it is the result of a sincere effort to search for the truth. As such, I respect Mungo’s position (and I also believe that God would respect it as well). I must also acknowledge that Mungo’s position is/has been the position of many righteous and intelligent Christians throughout history (though it fails to attain a majority within Catholicism itself). Hopefully Mungo would be prepared to extend the same grace and respect to my position. I would love to see more unity within Christendom (particularly within these ever more hostile times), but I doubt that significant more unity can be achieved in this area because the opposing views are so fundamentally different.
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