"Memo to Protestants eager to save Catholics from the Catholic faith"

Mark Shea is likely ticking some folks off... but I think these sorts of exchanges are terribly necessary and so I bring a portion of it:

Church: The Eucharist is not bread and wine, but the body and blood of Jesus,  according to his own word.
Protestant: So then, you’re saying the Eucharist is bread and wine.
Church: No, I’m…
Protestant: So since you believe the Eucharist is bread and wine, you’re saying God is bread and wine.
Church: No. I’m saying that there is no brea…
Protestant: So you teach that the Eucharist is God,  Man, bread and wine.
Church: What?
Protestant: Man!  I am *hammering* you  with my brilliance!  It’s amazing nobody for 2000 years thought of this  till I came along.
Church: Er…
Protestant: No need to thank me. I was obviously born for this hour, to lead the Church out of this amazingly simple mistake they’ve been making for two thousand years.  Now let me tell you what you believe about the Trinity.   You’re never gonna believe it!

Memo to Protestants eager to save Catholics from the Catholic faith. Before refuting something, find out if the thing you are refuting is what the person you are refuting believes. Begin by finding out if the belief you are refuting is even in the same galaxy as the person you are speaking with.

Here’s the deal with the breezy “Obviously the Church is wrong and the Eucharist is just a symbol and I can tell that by a brief glance at my Bible” line of argument:

In the first thousand years of the Church you simply cannot find anybody who regards the Eucharist as “just a symbol”. Everybody understands it as the body and blood of Jesus. The reading of Scripture you regard as “self-evident” (essentially Zwinglian) is an extremely late and obviously divergent view from what *every* apostolic Church—not just us dread mackerel snappers, but Orthodox, Coptic, Chaldean, Indian—*every* apostolic Church understood Jesus to mean for 2000 solid years. That view is traceable not only back to people like Ignatius of Antioch, who heard John with his own ears, (as well as multiple other Fathers, with *nobody* taking the Zwinglian view) but to the plain meaning of Scripture itself: “This is my body. This is my blood. If you receive unworthily, you are guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. This bread is my flesh, etc.” Indeed, even many early reformers such as Luther and the Anglicans are much closer to Catholic belief about the Eucharist than your crackers and grape juice “symbolism” view.

So, what you are asking me to believe is that *everybody* everywhere in the ancient Church—north, south, east, west, across the entire ancient world from India to Spain and from Scotland and Norway down to Egypt—all of them—were so massively stupid that they could not grasp that Jesus was obviously speaking symbolically and they—all of them—stupidly concluded that this obviously symbolic language really meant that it was the body and blood of Jesus. You are asking me to believe the apostles were epically bad teachers who spent some fifty years teaching the gospel, only to reap of harvest of moron so dumb that they couldn’t tell the difference between a symbolic piece of bread and the body of Jesus. You are asking to believe that you are 2000 years smarter and have just figured it out, along with a tiny minority of fellow Protestants.

He's got more and I, naturally, think it's a must read.

You?  Perhaps not. 

Comments

[Tim Chesterton]

'Just' a symbol is a rather inaccurate view of what thinking Protestants, at least, believe. I think if Mark Shea wants Protestants to listen to Catholics, he'd do well to pay them the same compliment.

[Rick]

Tim,

In all fairness, I don't think Mark includes the people you're taking umbrage in thinking he's including.

I think this particular statement (and I chose it as the title of this post purposely) is his constraining caveat:

"Memo to Protestants eager to save Catholics from the Catholic faith"

Hope that helps.

[Tim Chesterton]

Indeed - I didn't perhaps give that sentence the weight it deserves.

I too, as an Anglican, have been on the receiving end of people who have used the 'only a symbol' language. My reply tends to include the following questions?

'How carefully do you treat your wedding ring?'

'When you're away from home on a long trip, how do you treat the photograph of your wife that you took with you?'

'Are you aware that strictly speaking a dollar bill is not a dollar - it's a note for a dollar's worth of gold? So we can just throw dollar bills away, right?'

'Is your country's flag important to you? If you, why? It's just a symbol, right?'

I think symbols are enormously powerful, and in many cases, they effectively deliver that which they symbolize. Zwingli, I think, didn't believe this, but John Calvin (Reformed/Presbyterian) and Thomas Cranmer (Anglican) definitely did.

[Tim Chesterton]

Sorry, that should have read 'If so, why?'

[Rick]

I used to think along those lines but was always troubled by the fact that so many disciples were willing to abandon Jesus over a symbol... albeit a powerful one...

It always bothered me.

Now, if it was something other than symbolic... something quite literal, then I could understand the abandoning...

And now do...

[Tim Chesterton]

Rick, I don't feel inclined to pursue a controversy with you over this issue. I know that we both believe that when we receive Holy Communion we are meeting the living Jesus and feeding on him; that's good enough for me.

[Rick]

Tim, I didn't mean to communicate that I was looking for a fight on this...

[frank]

If your actions and reactions aren't controlled by your love for Jesus Christ AND your fellow man, then you've missed the point entirely. There's not a doctrine in the world that has ever saved a single person, except the doctrine of the cross and the risen Christ. There are far more admonitions against strife, mockery and wagging tongues in the Bible than there are discussions of Holy Communion. If we'd make a doctrine of that, it would serve us all better.

[Tim Chesterton]

Not at all, Rick. I was not criticizing you - simply indicating why I had decided not to respond to your last point. After all, disputes between Catholics and Anglicans (and between Anglicans and Anglicans!) about the exact nature of the presence of Christ in Holy Communion have been going on for centuries! It's not likely that either you or I would serendipitously discover the knock-out argument that would convince the other, and since friendship-in-disagreement is not an unusual thing for us, I was disposed to leave it at that!

God bless you, brother.

[chuck aka xtnyoda]

It has always seemed to me that The Lord's Table should be the one place that we should all be able to join together.

When we celebrate communion at our church I always make it clear from the start that all believers, regardless of denomination, are invited to join us, yes even desired to join us.

[Ilíon]

*yawn*
Catholics misrepresenting Protestantism and/or Protestants ... and shrieking that Protestants misrepresent The One True Bureaucracy and/or One True Bureaucrats.
*yawn*