ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: The earliest Christians, when they read and interpreted the Bible under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, understood this chapter (John 6) to refer to the Eucharist.  How is their understanding wrong and yours correct if they were so close to the Apostles and you are so far from them?  These people followed the Apostles and their teaching of Christ to the point of dying for Christ and His teachings.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: But the I AM statement is a parable….

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: No it is not.  The I AM statements are not parables; they are very unique and are only found in the Gospel of John.  Unlike parables, Jesus did not explain this discourse to the Apostles but simply asked them “Does this offend you?” (John 6:61) because it was “a hard saying” (John 6:60).  They did not understand it yet, but they did not disbelieve Him; they continued following Him.  Many, however, stopped following Him at this point.  Does it offend you?

Image © Simon Matzinger, Unsplash, 2015

MODERN CHRISTIAN: But, we are forbidden from eating human flesh and drinking blood in the Old Testament.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: This is true, but we do not receive the Body and Blood under the form of flesh and blood, but we receive the true Body and Blood of our Lord under the form of bread and wine in a mystery.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: So you do not believe in Transubstantiation.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: You keep using that term.  Why are you so fixated upon it?  Do you think the faith of Christ can simply be reduced to terms?

MODERN CHRISTIAN: That is the term the Roman Catholic church uses to describe what you are saying.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: I am not Roman Catholic.  I lived long before there were distinctions like that in the church.  I am a follower of Christ from the early days of Christianity.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: The term describes how the bread and wine are physically and wholly transformed to become literal flesh and blood; they only appear to be bread and wine.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: That is not how we understood what little we can of this great mystery in the early church.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: How did you understand it then?

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: The Body and Blood of our Lord is received under the form of bread and wine.  The form is bread and wine, but mysteriously the Body and Blood are there too.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: So how is it Body and Blood?  Does it change?

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: My friend, to answer the question “how,” we can never get to that answer.  Does it change?  Absolutely.  The Scriptures and the earliest Christians including the disciples of the Apostles and later (actually all of them until the Protestant Reformation) believed there was a change because that is what we received in the Scriptures and was brought to us by those who preached the Gospel.

In the early church, we called it a mystery.  It is a mystery.  Mystery means we cannot know how, yet we can experience it just like how we live and have experiences in this universe that is shrouded in mystery.  We did not know how the earth moved around the sun (which was due to gravity), yet we experienced it.  We do not know how the stones in Stonehenge were carried up that hill, yet we have seen Stonehenge.  These are mysteries, we do not know how they are, but we know that they are.  We still do not know how much of it works, yet we experience it.  Our Lord Jesus told us it is, so we believe that it is.  Just like how our Lord created the universe is a mystery, how the Eucharist is the Body and Blood is a mystery.  We know God created the universe, and we know the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of our Lord.  But to ask the question how, we cannot answer that question.  It is beyond us, and it is not meant for us to answer it anyway.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: But we are not supposed to eat human flesh and blood.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: We do not receive it under the form of flesh and blood.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: That does not matter.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: Actually it does matter.  Our Lord Jesus is a sacrifice.  There is no doubt here.  He really is.  It is not a metaphor, do you agree?

MODERN CHRISTIAN: I agree.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: In the Old Testament, humans were not allowed to be sacrificed, yet Jesus died for our sins as a sacrifice.  That is literal.  In addition, the people ate from the sacrifices.  In the same way we partake of the Eucharist.  That solves your perceived problem.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: But, we can’t sacrifice our Lord Jesus again.  It says in the Epistle to the Hebrews, “This [His sacrifice] He did once for all when He offered up Himself” (Hebrews 7:27), and “with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption,” (Hebrews 9:12).  Then, “We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all,” (Hebrews 10:10).

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: Who said we are sacrificing Him again?  I do not know any ancient Christian who thought that the Eucharist was repeating the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Rather, the Eucharist is the partaking of that once-for-all sacrifice.

To further explain this, I heard it said by a certain bishop from these days who belongs to the tradition of the ancient church that the Eucharist is not the repeating of the sacrifice, but every believer travels back in time to the table of the Last Supper to partake from that Supper with our Lord Jesus Christ and His Apostles.  That, I think, perfectly sums up what we believed in the early church.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: Did any ancient Christians write about the Eucharist as being the true Body and Blood of Jesus?

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: I told you earlier that the very earliest Christians wrote about it.  The Didache (c. 55 AD), which dates to the 1^st Century before the Gospels were written mentioned it.  Clement of Rome alluded to it in his letter (c. 99 AD).  Ignatius of Antioch mentioned it in four of his seven letters that he wrote on his way to be martyred (c. 107 AD).  Justin Martyr mentioned it in two out of his three major works (c. 150s AD), and Irenaeus of Lyon mentioned it three times in his major work (c. 180 AD).  They were clear that there was a change in the bread and wine to become the true Body and Blood of Christ.  These are just the ones who wrote before the year 200 AD, just to show you that this has been the belief from the very beginning: it is recorded in the Scriptures, it is mentioned by the earliest Christian writers, and the witness of Christians has been unanimous and universal.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: Can you quote me something from these writers?

ANCIENT CHRISTIANS: Yes, Justin Martyr said, “We do not receive these things as common bread or common drink; but as Jesus Christ our Savior being incarnate by God’s Word took flesh and blood for our salvation, so also we have been taught that the food consecrated by the Word of prayer which comes from him, from which our flesh and blood are nourished by transformation, is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus” (The First Apology, Chapter 66, c. 150s AD).

We can further discuss mentions of the Eucharist in the writings of the earliest Christians.

For Part III, click here.

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