If Jesus Knew, Then Why? A Question on the Real Presence in the Eucharist

Here's a question I've been wondering about.  But before I ask it, let's lay out some Scriptural facts.

FACT 1:  Jesus knew the thoughts and hearts of the people He interacted with while He was on earth.  (Mark 2:6-9; Luke 9:47; Luke 24:38; Matthew 9:4, Matthew 12:25, Luke 6:8, Luke 11:7) 

FACT 2:  Jesus knew the future while He was on earth.  (John 13:11, Matthew 17:27, Matthew 26:34, Luke 22:10-12, John 6:64, Mark 13:1-2)

FACT 3:  Jesus spoke the words given to Him by God the Father.  (John 14:10, John 14:24, John 14:31)

FACT 4:  God the Father knows the future.  (Isaiah 46:9-12, Psalm 139:1-6, Hebrews 4:12-13, Isaiah 42:9)

OK, with these facts established, let's get to the question:  IF Jesus knew the hearts and thoughts of His hearers and IF Jesus knew the future and IF Jesus only spoke the words given Him by the Father, then why would Jesus allow all of Christianity to misunderstand His teaching regarding the Eucharist for over 1500 years?

When we look at early historical documents, it is clear that the early Church all the way up until the Reformation believed that Christ was really teaching in John 6 that Christians needed to eat His body and drink His blood in the Eucharist.  

So that brings us back to the question:  IF Jesus knew how the Church would interpret His teachings, why did He let them interpret these teachings so incorrectly for so many years? 

As far as I can see, there are only a few possible answers to this question:

ANSWER 1:  The early Church DID NOT misinterpret the teachings, but instead held to a view on communion and the Eucharist much like the views held by modern-day non-Catholics.  Therefore, Jesus taught and the Church interpreted as God intended.  The current Catholic view was later adopted by the "Romanized" Catholic Church.

The first potential answer is the "Catholics changed the teaching of the Church later" answer.  Unfortunately, this answer doesn't truly deal with the historical record.  Even a cursory glance into Church history will reveal that the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist was a standard belief of the Church from the very beginning. 

"Consider how contrary to the mind of God are the heterodox in regard to the grace of God which has come to us. They have no regard for charity, none for the widow, the orphan, the oppressed, none for the man in prison, the hungry or the thirsty. They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not admit that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, the flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in His graciousness, raised from the dead."  (St. Ignatius, Letter to the Smyrneans, paragraph 6, 80-110 AD)

 Notice, St. Ignatius says the Eucharist is the flesh "which suffered for our sins and which the Father...raised from the dead."  If the Eucharistic presence of Christ's flesh is symbolic to St. Ignatius, then so was the suffering and resurrection of Christ.

Here's another quote, from St. Justin Martyr as he describes "Church" to the Romans:

"We call this food Eucharist, and no one else is permitted to partake of it, except one who believes our teaching to be true and who has been washed in the washing which is for the remission of sins and for regeneration [i.e., has received baptism] and is thereby living as Christ enjoined. For not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nurtured, is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus" (St. Justin Martyr, First Apology, 66 [AD151]).

There are many quotes to choose from, but here's one last one:

 "If the Lord were from other than the Father, how could he rightly take bread, which is of the same creation as our own, and confess it to be his body and affirm that the mixture in the cup is his blood?" (St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 4:33-32 [AD189]).

Notice here that St. Ireneaus isn't debating the Real Presence in the Eucharist.  Instead, he's using it as a proof that Jesus is God.  The basic gist of his argument is this:  if Jesus wasn't of the same substance of the Father, how could he take bread and turn it into his body?  He starts with an obvious assumption that must have been an accepted belief everywhere--the body and blood of the Lord are truly present in the Eucharist--and he uses it to further develop a deeper understanding of Christ.

Now, it could be argued that I'm cherry-picking quotes--that the early Church really didn't believe in the Real Presence except in a few unusual writings of a few unusual writers.  Well, we don't have the time to go through the entire written record of the Early Church Fathers.  But we can appeal to as unbiased a source as I can think of:  the renowned Protestant historian, J.N.D. Kelly.  Kelly explains, in his book entitled Early Christian Doctrines:  "Eucharistic teaching, it should be understood at the outset, was in general unquestioningly realist, i.e., the consecrated bread and wine were taken to be, and were treated and designated as, the Savior’s body and blood" (p. 440).

So, even a renowned Protestant historian (who has nothing to gain and much to lose by admitting the early Church clung to starkly Catholic beliefs regarding the Eucharist) readily admits that the witness of history is clear:  the early Church believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Thus, our question still stands:  Why would Jesus give us a teaching which He knew would be misunderstood by so many Christians for so long?

ANSWER 2:  The second potential answer to this dilemma is to argue that God simply allowed the Christians to be wrong in the same way that He allows the Jehovah's Witnesses (for example) to interpret the Scriptures their way and come up with false ideas.  After all, there is no limit to the number of groups who have interpreted scripture on their own to come up with contrary ideas.  God doesn't stop all of these either.  In regards to the Real Presence in the Eucharist, He simply gave a teaching and the early Church screwed it up until Martin Luther and the other Reformers set it right.  Sad for all those early Christians, but "thems the breaks".

The problem with this answer is that indeed, much of Scripture can be interpreted to mean many different things and God is, by no means, responsible for our bending and twisting scripture to fit our doctrines.  However, with the doctrine of the Real Presence in the Eucharist, that's not really the case.  

The reason is this:  All we have to go on Biblically regarding the Real Presence are very clear passages in which Jesus says "I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever."  So, he starts by saying He's the living bread.  Sounds symbolic.  But then he follows it up immediately, in the same verse, with:  "the bread I will give is my flesh for the life of the world"  (John 6:51).

Think about that verse for a second:  "the bread I will give is my flesh for the life of the world."  So the bread we must eat is what?  Is the flesh given for the life of the world.  Was his flesh symbolically given?  No.  Then how can we shift gears, break the analogy given by the Son of God, and say "the bread, the flesh, must be symbolic." 

We fall into the desire to make the passage symbolic because we, along with the early listeners of this discourse, don't understand.  We respond (as they did) with incredulity:  "You can't really mean we need to eat your body and drink your blood, right?  You've gotta be speaking symbolically, right?" (John John 6:52, paraphrased).  

To which Jesus says (and goes on to repeat himself 4 times):  "unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you" (John 6:53).  He even changes the Greek word from one which was the normal word for dining or eating, to one that was much more coarse and meant to "gnaw or to chew."  He says that this idea is a salvation issue--we must eat His flesh if we are to have life in us--and He lets people (followers) leave him (presumably forever) over this concept.  All He had to say was, "Wait!  I'm being symbolic!  Don't you get it?  It's just bread, but it represents my body."  Had He just said those simple words, the disciples (for disciples they were--see John 6:66) would never have left Him.

If Jesus had gone on to explain that He was speaking symbolically, then Catholics could be faulted for ignoring the clear words of Jesus and clinging to the metaphor instead.  However, He didn't say He was being symbolic.  In fact, He seemed to go out of His way to let everyone know He meant what He said.  And so, we have Jesus in Scripture giving us every inclination that He meant this literally.  If Catholics interpret this literally--as He implied it was meant--and they are wrong, are they to blame?  No.  The teacher is to blame.

Think about it this way:  if a teacher presents students with a lesson in class and uses heavy symbolism to make a point, and, when the students react and say the teacher can't be serious, only goes on to reiterate (over and over) that yes, indeed he is serious . . . well, are the students to blame for eventually taking him at his word?  Any responsible teacher, realizing the students had mistaken his intentions and the lesson, would have put the brakes on and made the symbolism clear. Any teacher who would stubbornly cling to symbolic language even when it was clear that the students didn't understand, has no right to feel angry or disappointed when those same students accept the teaching as true.

It's the same situation here:  with Jesus' teaching regarding the Eucharist, there is no interpretation of Christ's words needed to arrive at the Catholic concept that we must eat his flesh and drink his blood in the Eucharist.  If Catholics have taken Jesus at His word, they are not to blame if they are mistaken:  Jesus would be to blame for failing to clarify his teaching, especially since He (knowing the future and the hearts of men) would know that His stubborn refusal to admit to His followers He was being symbolic caused all of early Christianity to believe Him literally.

Finally, that brings us to Answer 3...

ANSWER 3:  He said it this way and let the early Church and all of the Church believe it in this manner because He truly meant it in this manner.  There was no other way to convey what He meant other than to simply say it as He did.  There was no clarification to make, so He gave none.  He said what He meant and meant what He said and He said it knowing that the Church, His Church, would understand exactly what He meant.

Of all the possible answers to the question posed at the beginning, the only one that makes sense logically and Scripturally is answer 3.  Jesus didn't mislead the Church.  He didn't give us a teaching that He knew we would misinterpret.  He knew the Church would get it right because He is God.  He knows our hearts, our thoughts and our futures.  Nothing surprises Him.  And so, when He spoke in John 6 about eating His flesh and drinking His blood and when He instituted the Lord's Supper with "This is my body", He knew how His people would interpret His words. 

The Pope Shows Up A Couple Hundred Years Early

One of the most frustrating things I've found in my exploration into Catholicism is the apparent lack of scholarly (at best) or honest (at worst) work when it comes to those refuting the claims of the Catholic Church. Now, that's not to say that the Catholic Church is right and that Protestants are wrong. I'm simply saying that when I look for information, I'm finding half-truths that can only be explained by poor research or a convenient hiding of the evidence.

To provide an example, let's look at a quote from Earle Cairns' book Christianity Through the Centuries. This text was handed to me by a co-worker who used the book in college-level religion classes. My co-worker was using the information in the book to dissuade me from my perilous journey into the world of Rosaries and Incense and Holy Water and he specifically directed me to several quotes--quotes he felt would bring me back into the fold, back to my Protestant roots.

One quote in particular he brought to my attention was concerning the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome (who we call today, the Pope). Here's the quote from Cairns' book:

Between 313 and 590, the Old Catholic Church, in which each bishop had been an equal, became the Roman Catholic Church, in which the bishop of Rome won primacy over the other bishops.... The bishop in the early church was considered one of many bishops who were equal in rank, power and function.... But beginning with Leo I's accession to the episcopal throne in 440, the Roman bishop began to claim his supremacy over other bishops.

So, according to Cairns, the Old (that is, the good) Catholic Church saw every bishop as an equal. There was no single bishop over all--no "Pope". All bishops exercised the same authority and power and function. In fact, it wasn't until Pope Leo I, in 440 AD, that the Roman bishop started to exert a role of power or supremacy over the other bishops.

Well, the quote sounds good. It sounds impressive. Cairns' wrote the stuff in a real book. He gives dates and names and he sounds very honest and scholarly. But, his claims simply aren't true. Or, at the very least, they're EXTREMELY debatable.

I've written a much longer rebuttal to the claim that can be found here, but really, to establish that the good Mr. Cairns' is either a half-hearted scholar, or worst, a bit of a sneak, we only need to look at a couple of quotes.

The first (not the first chronologically--see the longer work for ealier references) is from St. Ireneaus (140 - 202 AD). In his Adversus Haeresies, in Chapter 3 he writes about the Primacy of the Church in Rome saying that while it would take too long to enumerate the succession of bishops in ALL the churches, he will make his case by pointing out here:

the successions of the bishops of the greatest and most ancient Church known to all, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul, that Church which has the tradition and the faith which comes down to us after having been announced to men by the Apostles. For with this Church, because of its superior origin, all Churches must agree, that is, all the faithful in the whole world; and it is in her that the faithful everywhere have maintained the Apostolic tradition.

He doesn't have time to list all the bishops throuhgout Christendom so he'll list the bishops of the most ancient Church known to all. This is a very clear, very straight-forward example from the years 180 - 199 AD that the Church in Rome was considered superior to all others, that this church was regarded as being the most ancient and the greatest. It's proof of the existence of an idea that Cairns' claims surfaces much later in history: that all Churches in the world must agree with this church.

Now, I'll admit that Cairns' claim is regarding the BISHOP of Rome and that he didn't rise to power until later. This quote merely shows that the CHURCH in Rome held a position of primacy. But what I'm trying to show is that very clearly, sometime before the year 202 AD, the CHURCH of Rome was viewed as THE superior Church in the Christian world. At that point, we're only a hop, skip and a jump away from seeing that the Bishop of Rome would likewise hold a place of primacy.

But, a "hop, skip and a jump" isn't proof. So, let's move into the world of facts and prove that not only was the Church of Rome viewed as superior by the Christian world well before 440 AD, but that so also was her Bishop. And to see this, we need to look at one more quote--this one from Tertullian.

Now, Tertullian is an interesting case. He died a heretic (as far as we know), but his beginning years were Catholic. In his treatise on Modesty (AD 220), during Tertullian's Montanist period, he makes an interesting attack on the current Bishop of Rome, Callistus I. This attack is a powerful proof for the authority of the primacy of the Bishop of Rome largely because Tertullian was, at that point, no friend of Rome. Therefore, he had nothing to gain by falsifying Callistus' position.

To provide some quick background: Tertullian clashed with Pope Callistus over Callistus' relaxation of the Church's disciplinary procedures. See, Callistus, citing his Petrine authority to "bind and loosen"(which provides evidence of the Primacy of Peter in the early church), allowed repentant adulterers and fornicators back into the Church.

Tertullian, not wanting to let these folks back in (I'm oversimplifying here), was angered and responded with this:

"I hear that there has even been an edict sent forth, and a peremptory one too. The 'Pontifex Maximus,' that is the 'bishop of bishops,' issues an edict: 'I remit, to such as have discharged [the requirements of] repentance, the sins both of adultery and of fornication.' O edict, on which cannot be inscribed, 'Good deed!' ...Far, far from Christ's betrothed be such a proclamation!"

He sarcastically attacks Callistus as the "Bishop of Bishops" and the "Pontifex Maximus", but it doesn't take much sense to realize that the barb has no bite if Callistus wasn't widely held to hold a higher level of authority than all other Bishops. At the very least, we must acknowledge that Callistus himself must have felt he had more authority, because without that acknowledgment, the sarcasm fails miserably.

Secondly, moving past Tertullian's sarcasm, we should also note the Bishop of Rome issues an edict to let these repentant sinners back into THE Church. Not just back into HIS Church in Rome, but back into THE worldwide Church. Who is he to do that if, as Cairns' claims, he is in the same position of power as any other bishop throughout the Christian world?

Now, these are only two quotes, but as I mentioned earlier, there are plenty more. This is a blog and not a book, so I've attached the longer document with a much more thorough examination here for those interested enough to look. But even though these two quotes are short and simple and by no means conclusive, they are enough to call Cairns' claims into question.

To say definitively that there was no Primacy of Rome, no superior position held by the Bishop of Rome until Pope Leo "made it up in the mid 400's" just doesn't seem to wash with the real, historical evidence. And that leads me to conclude, as I mentioned earlier, that Cairns is either a poor scholar or a selective reporter. And sadly, this is the state of much of what I'm finding out there.

Symbolic or Real? St. Ireneaus Weighs In On Jesus In The Eucharist

What did the early Church Fathers think about the Eucharist? Did they think the bread of the Lord's Supper was merely a symbol of the Lord's body? That the wine was just a good way to remember that Jesus shed his real blood for us? Or, did they think the bread really became His body and the wine His blood? In short, did they hold to a Protestant interpretation or something more decidedly Catholic?

Here's a short quote from St. Ireneaus from his Adversus Haereses written sometime between 180 and 199 AD. However, first let me quickly explain that St. Ireneaus was the second Bishop of Lyons and had been a pupil, while a young man, of St. Polycarp. (St. Polycarp, just to put it all in perspective, is considered an Apostolic Church Father since he had been a hearer of the Apostle John).

Here's the quote:

If the Lord were from other than the Father, how could He rightly take bread, which is of the same creation as our own, and confess it to be His body, and affirm that the mixture in the cup is His blood? (Adversus Haereses, 4, 33, 2)

That's it. A short quote, but one that's remarkably profound in meaning. In this quote, St. Ireneaus makes it perfectly clear that he is not talking about any kind of mere "symbolic" presence of Jesus. The bread doesn't "represent" Jesus' body. It doesn't "symbolize" Jesus' body. It doesn't provide us with an amazing visual of how Jesus' body was broken for us.

No, according to Ireneaus--as early as the year 180 AD--the bread literally WAS the body of the Lord.

And we see this when we look at the logic of his argument: If Jesus didn't come from God, St. Ireneaus is saying, then how in the world could he take bread and confess it to be his body? If He wasn't from God, how could he say the mixture in the cup was His blood?

Ireneaus' argument only makes sense if he is assuming that the bread truly becomes Jesus' literal body and the wine His blood. Ireneaus' words mean nothing if he adopted a Protestant mindset about Christ's body figuratively being represented by the bread.

If he thought the Eucharist a merely symbolic representation of Christ's body (as most of us Protestants do), his argument could be summarized as such: if the Lord wasn't from God, the Father, then He couldn't say that bread figuratively represented His body.

And it doesn't take too much study or understanding to see that that statement doesn't make a lot of sense. No, there can be no merely symbolic Christ in the Eucharist for Ireneaus because ANYBODY can hold up a hunk of bread and say "this symbolizes my body." Any one of us could hold up a glass of wine and say "this is very much like my blood." However, only God could work such a miracle as to take those common elements and actually MAKE them into His body and blood. Hence his argument that Jesus HAD to be from the Father.

Now, it's important to point out that just because St. Ireneaus thought the Eucharist was Jesus' body and blood doesn't mean it really is. The writings of St. Ireneaus, while important and useful, are not necessarily inspired and are definitely not considered "scripture."

However, it is also important to understand and come to terms with the reality that many of us Protestants have been taught a tradition that might not be as true as we think. For me, that's definitely the case. I've been taught that the Protestant Church is more "authentic." That it's more like the church of the Apostles. I've read over and over that the early Protestant Reformers scraped away the barnacles that accumulated on the hull after Christianity became a "sanctioned" religion under Constantine.

And yet here we have solid proof--and believe me, there's much more where this came from--that the second and third generation Christians (and the Christians who taught them) believed in a very Catholic understanding of the Eucharist.