Debating the Eucharist // Cameron Bertuzzi vs. Matt Fradd

hello youtube this is your host of this channel cameron brutusi you're watching capturing christianity so this is a debate that you're about to watch a debate between matt frad over at pints with aquinas and myself that we engaged in back in june back on june 7th 2020 so that was about a year and a half ago at this point of as of the time of this recording but what we decided matt and i were talking we were like why don't we release this debate to the public because it's been uh we originally did this as like a patreon only kind of thing and we're planning on doing more of those so stick around if you want to i think the next one is actually on uh hell and we just haven't set a date for it but we're planning on doing more of them but this is the i think this is the first one that we did but it was on the eucharist and i really really enjoyed this debate it wasn't really a debate i mean you'll watch it i'll play it in just a couple minutes and you guys can see it for yourself but it wasn't really a debate it was more of a of a friendly dialogue but i just really i came away from it just remembering that it was it was a great dialogue it was a great discussion i thought he made good points i felt like i made some good points as well in favor of the metaphorical view that i was defending so all in all i just thought it was a great debate and i can't wait for you guys to watch it if you'd like to support either of our channels and gain access to more debates like this then feel free to do so links to our patreons are in the description of this video so yeah i think that's pretty much it just one last reminder that this is not happening live i pinned a comment about this in the live chat but uh this debate took place uh a year and a half ago at this point so it's not happening live you're just watching the playback the playback live anyways that said here it is here's the debate between matt fradd and i on the eucharist here we go oh okay i think we're live that's it thanks for tuning in guys we'll see you later bye that's cool this is happening because you're running it from your end of course so i can't see the chats or what people are saying i'm sure it's lovely i wish i could yeah what i what i could do is i could just like read them off as they come in ouch what happened yeah i just pinned myself got a bunch of pins in my drawer and i just stuck my finger on them i do not recommend this well we are live and this is super exciting we're doing a debate it's really an informal discussion between two friends on a very hot topic the eucharist it's not hot right now anywhere it's important yeah let's let's say it's important it's a very important topic so i'm really excited about doing this and we were talking about formatting everything we don't have like formal introductions or we're not going to do rebuttals or anything like that it's just going to be a really informal laid back dialogue we're going to share our positions we're going to have some dialogue back and forth try to understand each other really well and hopefully by the end of this make some actual real progress so that's what i'm most excited about yeah that is one of the things i was thinking today you know like what is the difference between a debate and a sort of discussion where you take you know contrary views and i was thinking you know in a debate like if you and i were doing a debate on a stage my goal is really to reach those people out there i'm not open to sort of examining my position in order to change it necessarily you know the job is to show why i'm right and you're wrong that's really the kind of the goal of a debate you know and that's why you've never seen anybody kind of remotely concede or maybe you have but definitely not kind of change their mind um but whereas in a discussion it's it's sort of less about that it's more just sort of you know trying to chat together i released a video recently called how to evangelize without being a jerk i don't know if you saw that or not okay someone said someone just uh made a comment i'm gonna put it up on the screen here we could do whatever we want can't we nick queen says can we avoid the conversion thing can you see that on the screen oh yeah i can't see that yeah you can isn't that amazing cameron wouldn't be converting to roman catholicism and matt wouldn't be converting to protestantism it would be a change of mind on an issue within the christian tradition yeah i disagree with that i think that protestantism i know there are multiple views when it comes to the eucharist you know within protestantism lutherans have a very different idea to say baptists baptists tend to have a metaphorical view calvinists tend to have more of a spiritual view lutherans have what they call consubstantiation the idea that jesus is present along with and under you know the species of of of bread and wine i think though that if you hold to a metaphorical view which i think you do cameron i think i think i think in all honesty and charity that that is a wrong view and that you should at least abandon that so even if you won't come to catholicism you might consider a different branch of protestantism eastern orthodoxy a different apostolic church but i i'm of the opinion that the metaphorical view is well a tradition of men to put it to put it frankly all right well we're going to get to that we're going to we're gonna talk about our our respective views and kind of share some of the reasons for and against and one of the things that was interesting in my research hey we we actually talked about praying why don't we do that first oh that's a good idea and then we can we can get into some some more of this uh i've got to remember i wanted to say something else though so let's pray and then you talk about research that's beautiful let's do that do you mind if maybe i begin a new end something like that yeah that works yeah in the name of the father son and holy spirit amen oh good and gracious god we give you thanks and praise for who you are we thank you that you exist and that you are good and that you love us we thank you that you have sent your son to redeem us who paid a debt he didn't know because we owed a debt we couldn't pay we thank you for the scriptures and for revealing your yourself to us your heart for us your will for us and i pray that just during this conversation i pray in particular just for me and cameron that we could let our defenses down and just try to speak with charity and vulnerability and humility maybe especially for me on that help us to follow the truth where it leads help us to be open to your word and to be willing to obey whatever it says i thank you for my brother cameron for his fantastic ministry and for his beautiful wife and kids i ask that you would bless him and be with him amen father as we have this discussion tonight i pray that we would be led by your spirit and that our egos would not get in the way of our search for truth tonight and that that's what this is all about we want to seek you we want to seek truth and to as matt said help take the barriers down and let this be a productive conversation defenses we don't want those to be an issue tonight we want this to be a very productive conversation and we can build each other up and to grow closer in our knowledge and closer to you and i pray for for matt's family if they're going through anything right now just pray that you would uh love in the peace would uh surround them and they would sense that your presence is there so we thank you for this conversation it's gonna be great um we love you and we thank you all right in jesus name amen amen okay uh so i wanted i remember what i was gonna say and nick on on the topic of nick he was saying that uh can we avoid the conversion thing wouldn't he he's not gonna be converting so i think what this brings up is an interesting topic about the stakes so the stakes i think for us are different so the stakes for me are i could accept something like transubstantiation or consubstantiation which which i'm not i i think that transubstantiation is is a better view than consubstantiation which for anyone who's watching this these are terms that i've like just learned very recently so if you feel like don't feel bad about not knowing what these what some of these terms are but consubstantiation and matt already kind of described a little bit but consubstantiation how many times am i going to say that word tonight probably more than just what i just said someone should keep keep school keep score uh take take a sip of whiskey every time right right matt yeah sure whatever no i've got i've got tea and he has water tonight i have water um can i even get to my point so my point is that the stakes are different for someone like me i could accept transubstantiation all of these these different variety of views i could accept the the view that is the the traditional teaching of the catholic catholic church that wouldn't necessarily require me to become a full-blown catholic i don't think maybe maybe you disagree with that but i think what i'm trying to say is that the stakes i think are different for us because if i'm right if the view is metaphorical and the christ's body and blood is not present at mass then you would have to abandon catholicism i think yeah or just be a yeah dissenting catholic but yes i would have to abandon catholicism at least in the form that you hold today no there's really no other there's really no other form i mean like yeah i have to abandon catholicism if if transcends if you know if transition is false yeah well i think it's important to talk about the uh these are the stakes and so the stakes i think are a little bit um what's the how do you how do you describe stakes they're harsher are they hard are they more difficult i think in your case for me i feel like i can kind of just adopt whatever view seems seems right for you that probably gives you more freedom in that sense might make this less less scary yeah well and this is yeah and this is a psychological thing that's going to play into how we assess arguments and which is not to say that that means that i'm completely unbiased i'm obviously coming from a historical background myself i was taught i was i grew up in a protestant church and so you go to your father-in-law's church he's the pastor can i say right exactly right yeah yeah so it's not it's not as if i i'm just completely unbiased but anyways i think it's important to point out the stakes here so where should we go from here i already said that i have a metaphorical view and this wasn't i'll say this real quick so i wasn't expecting to hold a metaphorical view i was at the beginning of this i was thinking because when we talked the first time that we talked i remember explaining to you that i found john 6 to be a pretty good defense or scriptural support for transubstantiation i remember saying something along those lines and so in my research as i've looked into this a little bit further and heard what protestants have to say about the interpretation of that passage i'm a lot less confident of the literal reading or of the catholic reading or interpretation of it so that's the that's the view that i've kind of i'm not settled on it very i think it's safe to say or it's accurate to say that i'm this is a tentative position of mine so even through the course of this discussion tonight i'm really interested to hear you know what your views and thoughts on this not just this passage i mean i'm sure that you'll want to talk about whatever but yeah i um i obviously have been involved in catholic apologetics for several years i used to work for the biggest sort of apologetics outfit in the world probably called catholic answers they're based out of san diego and when i worked at san diego you know i would do a lot of sort of reading and you know arguing and things like that with atheists and different people protestants and mormons or whoever else and um but actually since that time i haven't really done a deep dive into what the scriptures say what historically has been understood with regards to the eucharist and i can honestly say that i i am very very convinced that the catholic church's teaching on the eucharist is the biblical teaching and that it's what all christians should hold i found myself i actually was as i began to do it you know because part of the thing is when you're going to have a kind of discussion with somebody who disagrees with you you obviously want to read people who disagree with you because you want to kind of know how to respond and i just found myself really unimpressed with the sort of standard baptist metaphorical argument and just like really convicted about what the church teaches so yeah i i'm really coming away with kind of more certainty i think it's one of the things dr craig says to quote a protestant which is funny you know he says if you find that you're bothered in your faith pick one topic and chase that topic into the ground you know do the research and he said and it's very intellectually rewarding and it'll boost a you know boost your whole faith and that's kind of what i found like just studying the eucharist i i really see i'm going to say some strong words but i don't mean them to be personal or aggressive but i you know cardinal john henry newman has this line to be steeped in history is to cease to be a protestant and even though i know that sounds combative and maybe not to you but your listeners you know offensive like but i i find that that the catholic catholic church is teaching on the eucharist right that the eucharist is truly the body blood soul and divinity of jesus christ under the appearances of bread and wine is foreshadowed in the old testament taught explicitly in the new testament and i'd argue that it couldn't be taught more explicitly i don't think it's possible and that it's been believed for basically 1500 years by the church until shortly before the protestant reformation um and so for that reason i think i think it's a that's a really good reason to side with that view like and and i know last time when we chatted i quoted some church fathers and you said what i think a lot of protestants say and i think you're right to say namely we don't think the fathers are inspired right so they can make mistakes and i just want to say amen to that you know the scripture is the inerrant word of god there are no errors within it individual church fathers can absolutely and did absolutely teach false things believe false things um so that's true um and yet you know to dismiss what the people who knew the apostles personally um had to say i think would be full hearty and i don't think that's something you would want to do or would do you know um and so so i find their testimony like really powerful is as well i don't i don't know if you've read much of what the earliest christians had to say but i guess like when when christians and when catholics and protestants get into debates like this we we all have our favorite bible verses at the ready right he said you know um eat my flesh and drink my blood what is it unambiguous or about that or ambiguous rather and the protestant might say yes but he said my words are spirit and life he meant them to be taken spiritually or something what don't you get about that so often i find that okay mate we all agree what the bible says we don't agree what the bible means and and i think we can we can stick to the bible if you want but one powerful way of figuring out what it means is to see what the earliest christians believed it to mean because and i'll end with this i'm rambling a little sorry no i i feel like i'm following yeah okay if if we looked into church history and found that for the first like 11 centuries basically everybody believed that the eucharist was symbolic right and maybe you'd find like some unimportant you know not very prominent christian dissenting but basically everybody believes this thing is metaphorical and then you know in the 1500s all of a sudden the catholic church starts saying this is my body and blood we would kind of rightly kind of balk at that and say okay like this is this isn't this is an interpretation that was unknown for the first you know 10 11 centuries so i'm gonna go with a more ancient interpretation because that seems to me unless it contradicts the scriptures to be the way to go but it but what i've found is that when you look at what the early church has to say it's it's catholic there's no doubt about it and and so for that reason i think protestants should seriously consider the the true presence and this is yeah you go i'll stop talking sorry no no no i i what i was gonna say i'm trying to like i'm trying to process what your argument looks like and it sounds to me and let me know if this is what you're what you're kind of getting at you say it sounds to me like you're when you have a tie when it comes to scriptural interpretation tradition is going to break that tie i would say or maybe it can it can especially if the earliest christians are unanimous on it right it's one thing if i can pick a pr i can pick a father and you can pick a father and there was great dissension right and disagreement that's one thing but when the earliest christians all believe that this is bodily i i think at that point you've got to go with the fathers i mean because you go with what the earliest christians or you go with your interpretation yeah yeah yeah uh i'll have to think more about that that argument because i think i think that tradition does have some kind of evidential value so i think yeah but but i mean at the same time there are some things that i disagree with that are that traditionally have have been held so something like young earth creationism like i'm not a young earth creationist but i think a lot of church fathers probably adopted a view like that and maybe even taught it so i'm i'm a little less confident about tradition breaking a tie uh although although like i said i think that it does have some some evidential weight but then that but then the question is still and i'll just i'll finish this point and then you can come in the the question is still is there a tie in the first place right so if if there's a tie then tradition could break it but that still leaves over the question is there a tie so and that's i'm sure we'll get into that in a minute right yeah yeah right so i would say if the church father is unanimous on something like we should go with it if there's disagreement then that's different we should also consider the topic at hand right it's one thing uh i mean you know like i do that augustine made the argument that the genesis the first few chapters of genesis can be taken metaphorically right um but dealing with the creation of the world as opposed to here's what jesus said like 20 years ago 50 years ago and what we all understood him to mean i think that's a different thing i would also say that even if you didn't have the church fathers you can make the case that christ is truly present in the eucharist so we don't have to go there so i would say like i got my scriptures here in front of me at least just prima facie right because i want to begin by admitting that this what the church believes what is a radical belief like it sounds crazy that you can eat jesus that sounds bizarre i grant you that it's radical but i also think christianity is a radical religion and to many people the idea that god would become man much less die sounds crazy and yet we believe it to be true um but you look in the scriptures i i believe it's foreshadowed in the old and we could we could go into that that's a that's a big argument but basically i mean think about it so so let me let me let me get clear on what you're what you're saying so you're saying that the the transubstantiation is foreshadowed so let's explain the last supper let me just quickly explain transubstantiation just means that uh the substance has changed why while the appearance has remained i mean we read in genesis about angels who take the form of men right these angels appear right they have the appearance of men but substantially they're not they're angels right this is something angels can do and that god can take the form of bread since he's infinite in power um so the substance is the glorified body of christ while the accidents or the appearance is bred that's kind of what we mean so maybe for the sake of clarifying things um we're talking about the real presence of christ in the eucharist that he is present bodily and so yeah i think that that is let me just kind of break it down jesus christ is the new moses right he is here to initiate a new exodus this is something that uh biblical scholar brent petry argues for in his book jesus and the jewish roots of the eucharist he says we've often heard that people were waiting a political messiah who would overthrow the romans and but he said more than that they were waiting on an on a new savior like right a new moses and just as right moses led the israelites out from under the tyranny of pharaoh through the waters of the red sea where they were to sojourn being sustained by manna until they reached the promised land so jesus christ the new moses leads us out from under the tyranny of satan through the waters of baptism where we sojourn sustained by the eucharist until we reach the promised land of heaven and when you consider the fact that the last supper was a passover meal which christ radically altered because he's initiating a new passover that also has some implications i mean the way the israelites were saved was they they had to take an unblemished one-year-old male lamb slaughter it uh paint the blood on its doorposts and consume it if they were not to consume it you know if they didn't like lamb but sort of symbolically ate it or you know at least did all the rest but didn't eat it they that wouldn't have worked you know their son would have died the firstborn would be dead um christ is the passover lamb and as well as the new moses and he wants us to eat him the new passover lamb so i would say there's multiple ways in the old testament that that that's foreshadowed and i think this is how the earliest christians understood it i also think when you see john let me just read three quick verses right i would say john 6 has two main components he's talking about faith right needing faith he's also talking about him being uh you know we have to eat his flesh and i would say just prima facia this this seems quite obvious to me i mean if i am the living bread which came down from heaven if anyone eats of this bread he will live forever and the bread which i shall give for the life of the world is my flesh uh 53 so and there we have the jews right the jews are upset how can this man give us his flesh to eat so the jews take him literally so jesus said to them truly truly i say to you unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood now obviously this would be a shocking thing for jews to hear since drinking blood is something that was prohibited and so the shock that this must have brought about must have been pretty intense he says you have no life in you he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and i'll raise him up on the last day for my flesh is food indeed and my blood is drink indeed he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and i in him now in other passages in the gospels when people misunderstand jesus either he or the author of that gospel corrects them so when he says i am the vine or i am a door nobody is interpreting him to say well this guy's got hinges he wants us to pick leaves off him he's nuts you know rather it's clarified but here when jesus there is no clarification forthcoming he even allows his disciples to abandon him uh rather than correct them and i think that just on the face of it is a sign that jesus meant what he said and in fact i would argue that he can't actually say what he said more clearly okay i guess it's uh my turn to say something so yeah um i was i was trying to pull up some some notes that i had earlier but let me let me try to get clear on uh what you just argued because you you were talking about the uh the foreshadowing in the old testament and i'll have to try to piece about i mean that's one of the things that i don't like about debates is that it's like sometimes things just move too fast and i'm like not able to catch everything so so yeah yeah um but maybe we could just put that put that aside the foreshadowing thing and talk about the the scriptural stuff a little bit so yeah so john 6 is definitely one it is the clearest passage in the bible where someone would make a connection to we have to transubstantiation that jesus we've got to eat his flesh and drink his blood in order to have eternal life right and when you just read it it's it's just so obvious if you i mean the i can read it again jesus said to this is verse 53 of chapter 6 of john jesus said to them very truly very truly i say to you i i tell you sorry i'm let me actually tell you what i'm using the new international version um 53 you said we're looking yep 53 53 right now very truly i tell you unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood you have no life in you whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and i will raise them up at that at the last day for my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and i in them just as the living father sent me and i live because of the father so the one who feeds on me will live because of me this is the bread that has came down for that came down from heaven your ancestors ate manna and died but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever he said this while teaching in the synagogue in capernaum which is an interesting note he doesn't the well author john doesn't even talk about where this is happening until the end of this passage it's kind of interesting but not related to anything that we have to talk about tonight so uh so why do you take it to be metaphorical maybe maybe you could spend some time kind of elucidating that so i can better understand where you're coming from yeah so in my my research i came across a few different reasons so uh first first of all let's talk about some of the context here so john 6 is happening toward the beginning of john this is not the last supper this is not a last supper narrative the last supper narratives happen in matthew mark and luke and john doesn't even include a supper narrative so what which is very interesting we'll get we'll get to that in a moment i think that that actually supports the the metaphorical view so in favor of a metaphorical reading i have i have yeah i don't i don't know how many it is but let me let me just give some of these and then you can respond so you already mentioned that leviticus you didn't mention the actual verse but leviticus 17 10 through 14 forbids the drinking of blood yeah right specifically you shall not drink the blood and and i think verse 10 says it too but either way we're talking about the same passage so leviticus 17 forbids the drinking of blood which i think and i think you even you even kind of mentioned that that's that's a weird thing the jews were even saying you know are you saying that we've got to eat your flesh isn't that isn't that weird that's what uh that's then the ju verse 52 of john 6 then the jews began to argue sharply among themselves how can this man give us his flesh to eat and so i think that that is is some some evidence for a metaphorical reading because jesus was a jew and we believe that he didn't sin and so i mean that's at least some evidence so that's so that's one thing so the next thing is rabbinic teaching used a lot of metaphor didn't use any simile so jesus is the door he's the vine he doesn't say i'm like a door i'm like a vine he when he was speaking in metaphor he spoke very bluntly it's like yes this is my blood that you're eating yes i'm a door and so it's not very it's not surprising that he would use this kind of language on a metaphorical view and then if you keep reading in john chapter 6 john 6 63 says and the spirit gives life the flesh counts for nothing which kind of contradicts in a sense like what he just said if it's flesh that gives you eternal life how can flesh count for nothing so maybe we should just pause there and i'll get your thoughts on those those three notes and then we can we can move forward because i have i have a few more things to say you're welcome to continue i can respond to them sure so it sounds like the first kind of objection is jesus was a jew it stated explicitly that we sh we cannot drink blood much less the blood of a human therefore jesus wouldn't have commanded us to do that because it's immoral yeah it was it was commanded against yeah it was it was commanded against in the old testament and so as a law-abiding jew as someone who held to the mosaic law he wouldn't do that he wouldn't command anyone to disobey the law so i would say that if something is intrinsically immoral it would be wrong to tell them to do it even metaphorically right like if if i went to a church service and we all metaphorically stole from each other or committed adultery on each other you're right this would be an awful thing and an immoral thing to command so i would say that those who want to take the symbolic view as you do are sort of in a similar position to the the catholic and the orthodox and others because commanding someone to do something metaphorically that's intrinsically evil is still problematic well so real quick real quick on that so when someone says uses a phrase like she stole my heart like i don't i don't think anyone's gonna be super upset about that yeah oh okay fair enough so you you're saying yeah but drinking the blood so yes right when you say stealing my heart well that's yeah that's different to drinking blood well yes but it's stealing my heart can only mean like if if the spiritual if the metaphorical sort of um sacrament that this weird church was doing was we're going to steal the other person's heart and by that we're going to metaphorically cut open their chest and take it out but we're not going to really that would also be problematic wait say that again because so a metaphor a metaphor is not like you're not actually stealing someone's heart it's it's a metaphor for this person just fell in love with that other person and so the metaphor in this passage i i think is talking about wisdom oh okay and so the real understanding of the passage is about that that these people needed faith and they needed yeah they they needed to eat the word of god kind of thing huh they needed to believe in you they needed to believe in jesus yeah because he is the way to eternal life okay i think that and i think the overall context of of john 6 yeah go ahead so that when you receive communion isn't this like aren't you metaphorically saying this is kind of consuming the body and blood of our lord right okay all right um so can i ju yeah yeah let's pick up specific no no let's pick up let's pick up where we where we were we talked about leviticus 17 right metaphor was the other thing you said and yeah rabbinic teaching used metaphor and so it on a metaphorical reading or yeah on a metaphorical interpretation this is not unexpected to use this language right here's why i don't think this is a good objection when people wrongly take jesus literally he corrects them and explains what he means and conversely when people rightly take him literally he confirms and repeats so in john chapter 3 verse 3 through 5 when christ is talking to nicodemus and says you have to be born again and nicodemus says i have to go back into my mother he explains what he means or in john 11 when he says our friend lazarus has fallen asleep and people think he's actually slept he explains no no he's dead we could go on and on but i brought this up earlier like when jesus uses metaphor and people don't understand it either he explains the meaning of it or the scriptural author does and you don't have people taking him seriously right so maybe you have them taking him seriously when he says lazarus has fallen asleep so he corrects them maybe you have nicodemus taking him seriously or maybe he's being sarcastic and he corrects him but when jesus is speaking literally and people understand him to be speaking literally um he he kind of emphasizes what he means an example would be in john chapter 6 where christ is talking about the need to have faith in him and the jews are quarreling at this point he hasn't yet begun to say they need to eat his flesh right and they say you know how can he say i've come down from heaven and jesus says do you murmur among yourselves everyone who has heard and learned from the father comes to me he goes on and says i am the living bread come from heaven so that's why i'm not convinced whereas as i said in john 6 he repeats it and repeats it and repeats it with increasingly uh direct language and the original eyewitnesses believed he meant what he said this is the other thing that's interesting you have the jews taking him seriously right in in verse 52 and then you have the disciples in verse 60 taking him seriously many of his disciples when they heard it said this is a hard saying so this is just another thing to consider right the earliest eyewitnesses all believed him to be speaking literally but we 2020 years removed or whatever look at it and think no no he's just speaking metaphorically that's just something interesting i think um but the point is the jews are willing to not follow him obviously the disciples literally abandoned him this is the only example in scripture where christ's disciples abandon him over a doctrinal like over a teaching and i think that christ would have been morally obligated to explain himself to them rather than to allow them to abandon him for something they've misunderstood and then christ says you know will you leave too and that's when peter has that beautiful line like basically saying i'm not really sure what this means but where else are we going to go like we've come to believe that you're the son of god and then finally this idea that jesus said you know we're talking about spirit um i i don't see anywhere in scripture where spirit equals metaphorical what and and he said he doesn't say my flesh is of no avail he says the flesh what he's contrasting here is the fleshly carnal man and the spiritual man romans 8 5 9 says for those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh but those who live according to the spirit set their minds on the things of the spirit we could also look at one corinthians chapter 2 and chapter three um so he's not he's not contradicting what he's just said i don't think rather he's saying the carnal mind will not understand this it takes faith to understand this teaching because it is a hard teaching all right that's so that was the three points you brought up and so yeah yeah bring up more or challenge challenge what i said there okay let's talk about those so in uh in response to the and i'm just going to try to like give some notes here for anyone who's having trouble following along so i i brought up three different points in favor of a metaphorical reading so far leviticus 17 uh which forbids the drinking of blood and honestly like i don't even remember what the dialectic was between us on that so if anyone else is following along and wants to leave it in the live chat let me know um and if you if you remember matt if you can summarize what we talked about there that that's that'd be helpful too but i remember more clearly about the uh the rabbinic teaching used uh they used metaphor not simile when they would make these these emphatic points so one of the things that you said there i think it was your main point was that when jesus and tell me what it uh what the the circumstances are here jesus would explain his metaphors is that is that basically it when people wrongly take jesus to be speaking literally he corrects them and explains okay okay and is this in every case or is this i think so yes okay unless you have have one up your sleeve but i i don't think you will the other thing to consider is the context so when jesus says i am the vine i am the door as i say nobody is taking him literally so you could see why jesus wouldn't explain that but here everybody is taking him literally and he just emphasizes the point so yeah so i i mean i would ask you what would jesus have to have said for you to believe in the true presence of christ in the eucharist like what more can you say yeah so i i think that when it comes to john and i want to get back to this point about the uh the other passages and whether or not jesus always explains his metaphors because i disagree on that and i'll share with you the the passage that i have in mind um but the the idea that like what what would it take to convince me so i think that in the the the last uh supper narratives in matthew mark and luke i would like to see a little bit more clear you know literal teaching there which i don't really see it there that seems very very i mean that that's one of the reasons why when you're at least in in my investigation into this the the number one proof text that gets brought up on both sides is john 6. it's not the it's not the the last supper narrative in matthew or luke or mark so that i think that if if it was a little bit more clear in those than than maybe so and i think that the fact that this is this comes so early in john and this isn't the last supper narrative and john i think has got to to weigh in somewhere somehow somewhere because this isn't a last supper narrative and i and this is actually one of the arguments i think in favor of a metaphorical view which i can explain i haven't really gotten into it but i can i can explain that a little bit but um okay so let's go back to this passage that uh you were saying that when it comes to metaphor jesus always explains what the metaphor means when people wrongly take him literally okay so i think that i have a pretty clear counter example to that so in john 2 jesus clears the temple courts i'll just go ahead and just read the passage here this is in verse 13 of chapter 2. when it was almost time for the jewish passover jesus went up to jerusalem in the temple courts he found people selling selling cattle sheep and doves and others sitting at tables exchanging money so he made a whip out of cords and drove all of the temple courts both sheep and cattle he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables to those who sold doves he said get these out of here stop turning my father's house into a market his disciples remembered that it is written zeal for your house will consume me the jews then responded to him what sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this jesus answered them destroy this temple and i will raise it again in three days they replied it has taken 46 years to build this temple and you were going to raise it in three days but and this is the next verse but the temple he had spoken of was his body after he was raised from the dead his disciples recalled what he had said right then they believe the scripture and the words if you remember what i said earlier i said that in every instance where people misunderstand him you either have christ himself or the or the gospel writer explaining what was meant and that's exactly what we have here it's explained immediately what it's what was meant yeah he was raised from the dead his disciples remembered that he had said this and they believed the scripture and the word which he had spoken so whenever you have so okay fair enough fair enough so i think you're i think you're partly right and but i don't think it matters because what i said was when people wrongly take him literally he corrects them in this instance i'm i'm wrong it seems but the author of scripture does so i would i guess modify my statement and say when when people wrongly take christ literally you either have jesus or the gospel writer explaining what's really meant okay so then in so what we'd have to have then in john 6 is the author is so john would have to explain that he's not talking about real flesh and blood he's talking about something else and you don't find that any exactly like and by the way when i speak passionately about this i'm very passionate about i please don't feel like i'm getting intense or angry people sometimes look at me like dude you look upset i'm not upset i just get super passionate about this like nowhere in the gospels or in the epistles of paul do do you have anything like the real absence or like this is a metaphor but you continually have the real presence i think okay so yeah i mean if john or christ said i don't mean that i was speaking metaphorically what i meant by eating me was you have to receive me i sustain you or something like that then that would be a yeah that would be a a way to avoid taking him literally okay so let's let's leave that aside i think there might be other cases in scripture where in in john where that doesn't apply but let's leave that aside so uh one of the points you made earlier was that spirit when we're talking about spirit it's never used as metaphor is that what you said uh yeah i think that's what i said yeah spirit doesn't mean not real right or metaphorical right no spirit spirit nowhere is used in the bible to mean symbolic in in our understanding of symbolic right the spiritual is every bit as real as the material so in verse 63 jesus is contrasting the natural or carnal man with the spiritual or faith-filled man and i pointed to rome and i know we don't have time of course to proof-check uh these but um i pointed out first corinthians chapter 2 and romans 8 5-9 which offers a good explanation of what jesus means by the flesh we also see an example when he's in the garden of gethsemane where he says you know the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak pray that you will not fall into temptation okay so um so i think that going back to let me just read this this verse again so 60 so one of the points that i made was the in in verse 63 in john chapter six it says the spirit gives life the flesh counts for nothing the words i've spoken to you they are full of the spirit in life so maybe it may be helpful to back up a little bit and get more of the context so in the previous verses verses 53 through 59 it would be it'd be actually really helpful if i could put these on the screen maybe maybe something for next time i'm sure all of our nerd watchers have their bibles open right now oh yeah well yeah if you don't have your bibles open that's on you um okay so so we're looking so back into context so 50 verses 53 what verse 59 is like the the verse basic the passage that basically is is the sort of make or break thing here and so in verse 60 that's like the next section many disciples deserve jesus as the title of it in the niv so on hearing it many of his disciples said this is a hard teaching who can accept it and that's a response to you're about to eat and drink my blood you're about to eat my flesh and drink my blood and then they say on hearing it many many of his disciples said this is a hard teaching who can just accept it and so aware that his disciples were grumbling about this jesus said to them did this does this offend you then what if you see the son of man ascend to where he was before and that's in reference to uh he was sorry i just lost my train of thought here but it man so he he references something about it this is basically talking about something in in the previous ch in a previous part portion of the chapter i can't remember anyways let me move on because it's not it's true yeah so the spirit so next verse the spirit gives life the flesh counts for nothing the words i've spoken to you they are full of spirit and life did you want to say something i was just going to say what do you think he means by the flesh then because he doesn't say my flesh is of no avail obviously he's just spent the last chapter talking about why his flesh is going to save the world and why we have to consume it to have life so what do you think he means by the flesh um i i mean it's it seems to me like he's just talking about flesh like physical okay yeah i mean so here's here's what i want to say in response to you said spirit is not used as metaphor so i don't think that he's actually using metaphor here i think he's being literal he says the spirit gives life i think we both agree on that and that's not he's not making a metaphor here and he says the flesh counts for nothing now that i think is sort of interesting what does that really mean and if it means if if if we take that as literal then it would mean that the previous passage that he just said has got to be metaphorical i think and so it's not that spirit is being used as a metaphor here that's being used literally so that's actually compatible with with what you say even if you're right that spirit is never used as a metaphor i think that's actually consistent with this uh oh yeah and then you said the flesh is not my flesh that was one of your previous points so yeah i just think that he's he's making a contrast between the spirit and and the flesh like you're only going to get to heaven you're only only going to have eternal life if you have the right kind of divine wisdom believe in jesus okay let me um let me offer five quick points to that okay and and maybe i've said them before right regarding the spiritual thing but let me just try and sum them up really quick okay first i think i would say and again i'm offering five points so this could be too much i think the eucharistic discourse ends with verse 58 okay um c verse 59 for example this he said in the synagogue as he taught at capernaum and then it continues for sure but it seems to me that that first bread of life discourse is coming to something of a close second as i say the word spirit is nowhere used in the bible to mean symbolic the spiritual is every real as the material so maybe you're not saying this but if somebody says see he's just speaking spiritually that's that sounds like they're using spiritually as a synonym for metaphorically you might not be doing that but i think some protestants do that thirdly in verse 63 as i've said jesus is contrasting the natural or the carnal man and i've given two scriptures for that first corinthians chapter 2 verses 14 through chapters 3 verse 4 and romans chapter 8 verses 5 through 9. the fourth point as i've said is that jesus says my flesh when discussing the eucharist he says the flesh when referring to as i've said the non-spiritual man who will not believe anything beyond his senses um fifthly we actually see the unbelieving disciples leave jesus after verse 63 right so in verse 63 he says it is the spirit that gives life 66 it's interesting to me john 6 666 that's not a good argument obviously the chapter managers were put in much later matt can you hear me yeah oh uh we there was like a blip that happened like i don't know if it's like a network thing so just repeat your number your number five yeah the unbelieving disciples leave jesus after this bit about spirit and life so if the spirit and life bit was meant to say this is only a metaphor the disciples shouldn't have left him can you can you hear me now is it coming through yes yeah yeah yeah yeah i'll let you know they would have you know yeah so i think that's the final point they would not have left at this point if jesus had assured them that he was only speaking symbolically okay okay so the so the yes so in verse 66 the disciples turned back and no longer followed him right so so if this if this if what christ says in verse 63 is meant to say even though the jews and the disciples and everybody listening to me misunderstood me i didn't really mean it what i meant it i meant it to be taken this way not that way we shouldn't see the disciples drawing back and no longer walking with him and then not only does jesus not call them back he turns to the 12 and he doesn't then explain to the 12 what he means he says will you also go away as if to say i'm not this i meant what i said here and that's when you have peter saying lord to whom shall we go you have the words of eternal life and we have believed that you know et cetera et cetera yeah i'm i like to to process that the exactly exactly that was a lot well number three four and five are definitely things that i need to think about more so number one you said it ends at 58 that i'm not sure about uh number two spirit is not metaphorical yeah so i think that i i kind of already explained that number three the natural versus carnal i that's something i'll have to look into for my flesh versus the flesh i i don't think that there's a real good distinction that could be made there that's gonna help the literal reading uh number five disciples turned around and didn't follow him i think that's pretty easily explained by the metaphor metaphorical view but maybe it's time to move on sure what do you think okay yeah so let's leave those let's leave those aside and talk about some some more of the the reasons i think that a metaphorical view so i've listed three here's number four uh verse 58 references bread tying it back into the beginning of chapter six which is clearly metaphorical so toward the beginning of the chapter it's actually more in the middle of the chapter i think it's in verse 35 jesus declared i am the bread of life now this is clearly metaphorical right he's saying i'm the bread of life he's not calling himself bread of life he's making a metaphor here yeah i would say there are kind of two kind of parts to this you have jesus not at this point claiming that he they need to eat his flesh the the point of this and he clarifies it is him saying i've come down from heaven so i agree with that mm-hmm uh but what he's talking about uh if you look at the broader context of this verse or this uh this chapter let me see i don't want to get ahead of myself here okay um so the broader context of this chapter is this comes right after he feeds the five thousand so at the beginning of chapter six he feeds five thousand people and then people start looking for him they're like where did this guy go that gave me all this food i need to go find him and so he's like off at capernaum and this is what comes up in later yeah they across the uh when the evening came his disciples went down to the lake this is verse 16 where they got into the boat and set off across for the lake for capernaum and then basically the the rest of it follows and so what these people were looking for was food and so what he's explaining is he says that i'm what you need you don't need food i'm what you need and so and he's he's using that metaphorically for sure at the beginning of the of the chapter and so in this crucial part of chapter 6 verse 53 through 59 or 358 in verse 58 he says uh well let me let me give a little bit more context so 55 for my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and i in them just as the living father sent me and i live because of the father so the one who feeds on me will live because of me this is the bread that came down from heaven your ancestors ate manna and died but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever so that seems to tie in the same metaphor that's happening earlier and if the broader context seems seems to convey that he's making a metaphorical teaching that look what you need is spiritual divine wisdom in order to be saved you don't need a food you don't need you know fish and loaves of bread what you need this is what i'm trying to tell you that you need is you need divine wisdom basically so that that seems to me to kind of the fact that he ties in the bread anyways what are your thoughts yeah i would say that john 6 has two major but inconnected interconnected themes jesus teaching about the eucharist and jesus discussion about faith and so i think what we need that this unique and special faith that is needed to accept his difficult teaching about the holy eucharist so i would agree that in the beginning he may be speaking metaphorically and talking about how he's the bread of life but then he builds upon that and as he builds upon it the fact that everybody understands him to be literally to to to to to be literal in that regard is a is a good is good evidence that he he was being literal i suppose that's that's all i'd say i'm the bread of life he who comes to me shall not hunger right agree right like it's kind of it's not an either or thing here it's a both and right yeah we come to christ he satisfies those deepest desires of our hearts that will not be satiated by earthly bread or whiskey or whatever i also think there's probably a good argument that could be made that the jews are looking for the new moses and just as moses gave manna from heaven they're looking for something they're looking for something like that and he's saying he is the bread of life which he is and then he explains what he means with that and then he and then he begins to intensify his language without correcting himself or clarifying or saying that this was only a metaphor so um you know i asked you earlier like what what could jesus have said for you to believe what by the way the majority of christians the vast majority of christians on the planet believe right that jesus is present in the eucharist in a bodily way and and and you said in john you know in the in the last supper accounts he could have been more explicit but i don't know how he could so like jesus says this is my body and i suppose like you can only say you can only use this sort of language right this is my body or no i'm telling you my body is is flesh my blood is real drink you can only say that you only have language to work with so this would be a question so here's who you're watching yeah you go so here's something to say about that so as i was researching this in a commentary that i was reading it points out that and i think it's a what's definitely not a like a catholic commentary or anything but the the commentary i was reading points out that the the word here used in john 6 is flesh and whatever word that is in greek it's a different word that's used in the the upper the uh the last supper narratives so last supper narratives use body and in this chapter in in this passage it uses flesh so it's a different word that's being used which is interesting i don't know how much that proves either way yeah but i mean it you see the clear connection between the john bread of life discourse and the upper room in the last supper right actually i'm not saying these you don't so you think these are two independent events that don't actually have a connection okay yeah so and here's here's part of the reason for that and i was gonna i was gonna save this until until later but it doesn't matter so so yeah so in john what is the point of john's gospel he's he's very passionate about evangelism he wants people to get saved and you can see that at the end of let me see if i've got it written down here okay yeah so the last two verses of john's gospel say therefore many other signs jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book but these have been written so that you may believe that jesus is the christ the son of god and that believing you may have life in his name so that's basically like a summary of what he's doing now what's interesting if if that's what he wants to do is tell people what they need to do in order to be saved in order to believe in god and to have salvation it's interesting that he didn't include any kind of really detailed last supper narrative where he details where he details all of the you know flesh and blood drinking and so that that is it was really interesting in my study so if jesus at the last supper had have said if john if john had if john had had an account in yeah so the the the last supper narratives are in matthew mark and luke and there's none in john and the one in john chapter six is not a last supper narrative at all he's talking about it in context he's he's addressing these people who wanted food from him so it's not a last it's not like there's no passover meal which is another interesting thing is that the eucharist was actually the eucharist was not a passover meal well not in john chapter six oh did he he hasn't referenced this as the possibility yeah john chapter six is not yeah it's not a passover meal okay and this is where i think we might we like saint augustine said the old testament let's put it a different way the new testament is concealed in the old and the old testament is revealed in the new so think about this and here i'm quoting from from somebody else the same victim that was offered up to save the lives of the firstborn of israel was also the victim consumed as food for bodily israel for bodily nourishment as the israelites began their journey to the promised land the prefigurement this prefigures the eucharist where the same victim jesus who was offered up for our sins to save us from spiritual death is consumed in the eucharist to provide spiritual nourishment for the journey to our promised land so the passover meal ought to have had a lamb but you notice when you read the accounts of the last supper there is no lamb there is only bread and wine because jesus is the lamb of god and he's giving himself to us so that we'll be saved in a similar way to how you know israel was in a sense saved you know duri in the book of exodus um from from bodily death so i don't i disagree like i think when you take the bible as a whole i i think that this is you know this is the culmination of many things that are prefigured in the old testament and what what he alludes to in john 6 and then i also think that that paul couldn't be clearer about the fact that this is a real participation in the body and blood of christ so you know one of the good things about these discussions and you can say something here sorry but is that um i i don't know about you i i made a decision a while ago that whenever i kind of talk to someone who i disagree with it's really helpful not to expect anyone to sort of uh change their spot on the mind on the on the on this change their mind to their mind sorry um not just because you know your ego gets involved but also because there's a lot to process you know what i mean yeah like i've thrown out a bunch of stuff you've thrown out a bunch of stuff the idea that we can process this on the spot and alter opinions is is unrealistic so i know i'm throwing a lot a lot out there no it's okay i think i'm gonna leave that and and move on to some other stuff that i wanted to get to and get your thoughts on uh okay i think i pretty much said everything i wanted to say about john six yeah okay let me move on to this so there's these are i'm gonna lay out two philosophical problems with the eucharist and or with the what the view of transubstantiation and so when i say that these are philosophical problems i don't think that they're insurmountable however what i think is that if you're catholic you've got to have a view on this and you've got to make sense of it somehow so here's problem number one are there two christs is there just one christ or other two christs are there more than two christs there's one yeah you've you've got to believe that there's one christ but here's the question at the last supper described in matthew 26 or mark 14 or luke 22 is uh so what's happening there think think about what's what's happening at that supper so on the on the catholic view jesus is there he's like all of his body is there i don't think anyone's like can see his legs or anything but he's he's there full full bodily integrity he hasn't been crucified he hasn't been ripped apart or anything as of yet this is the last supper so what where does the body come from that you know gets turned into the mind and the bread yeah where does christ's body come from that that looks like bread that looks like wine but it's actually the body and blood of christ where does that come from if it's not from christ it it maybe it's another christ so yeah yeah so do you get the kind of yes so the idea is you already you already have jesus in the room and jesus is he's fully there and he points to something and says this is me it's like okay so now are there two of you are there two of you yeah cause like if i was to i was i was it's real this is a really weird problem so i was i was trying to think of like a really easy metaphor yeah i was trying to think of something i think there's ways around it so if for any catholic viewers i'll i'll give a way out if matt can't think of one i'll i'll give away out it's very generous which it's not matte it's not uh anyways anyways uh so when i when i think about something being in two places at once like this pen for example when i think about this i've got to take something away from the pen in order for it to be in in two places at once right and so but in jesus's case it's not like he took off his little pinky toe and that's what looked like bread right right so so then what's going on here how how can his his body be in two places at once because we can't the catholic teaching is very explicit that there's one christ [Music] yeah i haven't given that a great deal of thought so that's a good question which i'd have to spend some time thinking about i suppose i could say that given the fact that jesus christ is god he can communicate his body to us under the appearance of bread and wine and what the church believes isn't that when we consume the eucharist we consume a part of christ like a lock of his hair or his ear or something like that and that the jesus is sort of running out this isn't cannibalism right but this is absolutely in us in a mysterious sense uh distributed to us for our consumption and i'd have to think i'd have to give that some more thought as to how i can explain why jesus is present in the bread and the wine and present sitting at the table yeah so i think like i said i think this is just a philosophical problem that you can get around so one one way that you can get around it is to say that something could be in two places at once and that that to me is really strange when i when i think about that it just strikes me as is for sure physically impossible that's physically impossible but that's not to say that it's metaphysically impossible right no i think that's yeah i think you've just answered my question i think i think something can be in two places at once yeah so i don't know if there's a doctrine of this but i've i've seen catholics respond by pointing to something called by location exactly that's exactly that's exactly what i was about to bring up there are instances of the saints some saints by locating if you look up padre pio by location you'll see and he lived you know during the time that the beatles were playing so we're not talking a long time ago he actually received the stigmata that is the wounds of christ on his hands and feet and they were they were kind of inexplicable he was put through a bunch of tests and doctors couldn't come to any kind of natural sort of uh explanation but he is said to have bilocated so all right yeah so that that's really interesting you could just ask like is that even possible not not can it can it not does it happen not has it ever happened but is it possible for god who chose to be hypostatically united to a human nature is it possible for this all-powerful god to give us his bread give us his body and blood to eat on the appearance of bread and wine in a mysterious way for sure it's mysterious um is that possible or not and i would say yeah it is given what christ says given what saint paul says given what the early church believed and given what the catholic church has taught for 2000 years it is and so at that point the question is okay well then how do i make sense of this and i think we all experience this right as christians we say that god is three persons in one god and someone objects to that and says this is this is silly this this is this doesn't be one three can't be one right and then you can multiply different examples and so we we we continually confront these and then we sort of and we look really to the church which has been reflecting upon these things for the past two thousand years and i mean see what the church has to say because whenever whenever there's a serious dispute about a doctrine the church intervenes so the first council of nicaea 8325 right when when when the aryans were trying to to to to say that christ was something of a demigod or a sub god or proceeded you know from god but wasn't co-eternal with him the church convenes a council and makes the definitive statement that who what is it what's the group the greek homurusios the idea that he's of one substance um and and so we see that throughout church history what i find really interesting is the the first prominent christian to take your position cameron is um baron garrius of tours in the 11th century and and even he it's not quite clear whether he wanted to do away entirely with christ's real presence in the eucharist what's interesting is when you look at and then after him you have john wickliffe in the 14th century who tries to resurrect some of barry and garris's ideas by appealing to the early church right and then you have the protestant reformation and zwingli is the one who really takes the sort of metaphorical view more so than calvin and definitely more so than than luther but think about this i think this is a question that people should take seriously right that if christ like as a catholic i received the eucharist today and i worshipped the eucharist right i gave it adoration and i received it into me if two points if you're right then for the vast majority of christian history all christians or the vast majority of christians have been wrong about it and it was only like 500 years that we figured out he meant it symbolically that's strange um uh what else was i going to say like that that would that would really bother me and it would bother me if it didn't bother you you know um i'm sorry to to make you to make you yes should that bother you you're gonna have to be bothered because it doesn't bother me that i'm bothered for 1500 years you have christians basically committing idolatry they're not even smart enough to create a golden calf we're worshiping bread and wine this is a serious sin right jesus says if your brother sins against you you know chat about it bring a few others and then he says bring it to the church so if i see the sin of idolatry taking place and then i bring it to the church you're telling me that for the first 1500 years christ's words were basically not relevant because the church didn't understand the eucharist and and that i think is is really problematic for your position that cr what did you say christ's words were not right so christ tells us right if we if if our brother sins against us he eventually says to bring it to the church right i need to i need to look this up matthew 18 17. so you're a protestant you should have known that before i looked it up that's a joke not a funny joke but it's a very good joke thank you so 17 right let's see matthew 17 yeah if your brother sins against you go and tell him his fault between you and him alone if he listens to you you have gained your brother but if he does not listen take one or two others along with you that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses if he refuses to listen to them tell it to the church and he who refuses to listen even to the church let him be to you as a gentile or tax collector right so for 1500 years if i have the correct interpretation of the eucharist and i see people committing idolatry and i bring it up with them and then i bring a few others along with me and then i bring it to the church for 1500 years the the the position for 2000 years in the catholic church and other apostolic churches the opinion the the church is going to say that the jesus christ is truly present in the eucharist so if so this given that it would seem to make christ's words at least unhelpful to say it best false at worst for 1500 years because the church cannot settle the matter on this because the church has been wrong for 1500 years look i'm okay like i'm really like maybe that's okay right like okay so where where's the i i you said 17 right matthew 17 18 17 oh 18 17 okay i was like i'm not seeing this the point is if if someone's sinning against you he's talking about the authority that the church has right the last resort is to bring it to the church if he refuses to listen even to the church let him be to you as a gentile or a tax collector what i'm saying to you is if i live in the 14th century and i'm john wycliffe and i start to decide that my brother christians are sinning grievously by worshiping the eucharist and i bring it to him as the scripture tells me to do and cannot reconcile and then i bring two or three evident witnesses and bring it to him and then i and that doesn't work and so i finally the last resort that christ gives us is i go to the church i tell it to the church and jesus says if he refuses to listen to the church let him be to you as a gentile or a tax collector so the simple point i'm making is for 1500 years as it pertained to the eucharist christ's words were basically unhelpful because if i brought this to the church during those 1500 years you don't find anyone any one prominent who denies the real presence of christ in the eucharist and holds to what you hold to so they were unhelpful in this in the instance of the eucharist this doesn't even have to be a knock down argument i'm just trying to make you feel uncomfortable right you could be uncomfortable and i could still be wrong but yeah i'm not i'm not uncomfortable i i i think i'd have to understand more what the argument here is so i know that's i'm not claiming that you're arrogant you're a very humble guy i know you personally you're a good dude but it seems to me to be an arrogant position and again positions can't be arrogant only people can okay so maybe this is unhelpful terms here but it seems to be an arrogant thing to say okay the eyewitnesses took him literally jesus spoke as if he meant it literally saint paul speaks as if it's literally in first corinthians 11 27 whoever therefore eats of the bread and drinks of the cup of the lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the lord um he goes on there's other verses we can look at you have the earliest christians all believing the same thing it just yeah i i i don't i don't i don't know what would convince you if jesus saying this is my body this is my blood and jesus saying this is my body i i i would here we go let me be a little challenging here i would submit to you that there is nothing that our blessed lord could have said to convince you because i cannot see how he could have said it clearer and that's why i said earlier what would have he had to have said yeah so i i typically don't like those types of questions because i mean they they happen in like atheist discussions too sometimes christians will ask we'll ask atheists what evidence would convince you that that god exists and i mean atheists could ask christians the same thing so like what would convince you that god doesn't exist an atheist might ask a theist or a christian and the reason why i don't like those types of questions is because it asks us to imagine a scenario where we'd have some evidence and so for me personally i'm not good at thinking up stuff like that on the spot so you're kind of putting me in a position to be like oh well it would be this but i'm not really good at that i probably have to sit down and really think hard about like some some counter factual scenario so that's and that that's really just a a sort of side question what would convince you that's more a matter of psychology and it's not really the reason why i like to focus on the question of what what should convince you that that's what is more interesting to me it's like what should convince you that this is the case and when we do that we just got to turn back to the evidence and like what what are what does scripture actually say about it you know what's the context of this verse and and how is it being used and in the other cases of scripture you mentioned in first corinthians uh i think well we have first corinthians 11 27 first corinthians well 11 28 through 29 right he says let a man examine himself and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup for anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself and i quoted verse 27 where he says if you drink of the lord in an unworthy matter you're profaning the the body and blood and in you know in saint paul's time this expression right to answer for the body and the blood of someone meant to be guilty of murder right shedding that person's blood you're guilty of his blood so if i take a photo of cameron batuzi and i tear it in half i've done something disrespectful but i haven't kind of committed homicide right and it sounds like the language saint paul is using is that of of your profaning the body and blood and that this is the language of of homicide yeah so this to me doesn't sound at all on the face of it this this verse first first corinthians 11 27 doesn't sound to me at all like it's describing of a the the last supper or the eucharist or the transubstantiation view so if you oh okay yeah so then whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the lord yeah so how how okay so here's here's another thing is that you can't just like read a verse and automatically think that that supports your view you kind of got to give an exegesis of it right fair enough a text i forget who said it a text without context is a uh what does he say a verse text yeah yeah so yeah so you've got to give an exegesis of that passage before you want to say that it's like supporting a review because i i mean to me it looks really obvious uh on a metaphorical view or a metaphorical view of the of the eucharist so i mean you can still be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of jesus i mean what he did on the cross it's a very serious thing that he did and so if you take it in just a nonchalant kind of way then you're sinning against like what he did for you and so i mean that seems like a completely legitimate reading of that passage for that scripture yeah okay so i don't want to like read too much into these to these passages i mean i i think what's kind of happening is that we you have your view of of the of the lord's supper and i have my view and so when we look at a passage like this we want to read our view into it through that instead of just like sort of yeah instead of just reading this for like what it is and it could be i mean it makes sense on both views so i don't think that it actually supports one over the other okay yeah i think yeah well there you go i do think it supports i do think it supports my view i think paul believed in the real presence of christ and i think this does show that but i see what you mean that we're both sort of interpreting something through our own lens i guess we can't get away from that yeah so what part of this of this particular verse leads you to the one point he's talking about the thing that i was pointing out and what i've read up on is when he talks about being guilty of profaning the body and blood of the lord right that this is language in paul's time for homicide and i see what what you're saying about we're guilty for the body and blood of the lord but in a sense like of course like in one sense we're all guilty and that so that's why christ had to die um but he's he's speaking specifically to those who eat the bread and drink the cup and so my only point there is couldn't he just be talking about the seriousness of it that this is a very serious like got to take this stuff seriously you're not just going to like drink you know red and wine just nonchalantly totally and if you're receiving the body and blood of jesus christ you ought to be you ought to be taking it seriously so that would that would make sense um but i suppose and also i mean because you're not i mean even if even on the transubstantiation view he's not talking about body and blood that exists there he's talking about something that existed prior so when you take he's even yeah he's not even talking about like a real situation he's talking about like in any case that that someone does this no i think he's addressing your guilty situations that's taking place in okay okay the right right right but okay my my point is his reference yes so he's referencing a past existing body of christ past existing yeah so he's not so it could be referring to i think he could be referring to receiving who are going to receive eucharist that's what he's referring to because this is something that was celebrated ever since christ ascended the new passover which christ inaugurated and which the apostles celebrated and so the point i'm making here just to kind of wrap this up is yeah yeah i don't want to spend too much time on this yeah it's just to damage a symbol doesn't damage a person and if paul is using the language of homicide here that would make sense not if this were a symbol but it would make sense if the bread and the wine were truly the body and blood of christ yeah i'd have to get on my version it says sinning it will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the lord so right i'd have to like i'd have to i don't know what the greek is yeah okay uh let's let's move on so i only mentioned one of the philosophical problems i didn't mention the other one yeah we're going to get to that before we move to to some questions or did you have anything else you wanted to say here's kind of because it's it's 10 23 now here's an idea of how we could lay out the rest of it you could do your philosophical objection i think i'll save it i i don't think it's that important well maybe we could take some questions and then maybe you and i could sort of sum up sort of the position that we've been trying to make and called and i like that i like that let's do that now and then take questions oh oh so sum it up okay let's sum it up now and then take some questions how about all right do you like that yeah you want to go okay yeah yeah uh yeah so i'll go first and then i'll let matt have the last word but what i want to do is let you guys know anyone who's watching if you're from matt's channel or from my channel uh well first of all thank you guys so much for becoming patrons supporting us and supporting a dialogue like this this is it's really important and there's a lot that can be said about it but i really appreciate it i really appreciate it all of you guys watching so we're gonna do some q a and if you have a question for me if you have a question for matt then write it in the live chat and ref like let me know who it's addressed to and i'm not going to be searching through the the previous comments because there's too many at this point so if you have a question cameron there are 58. this is so cool because it's like it's like an intimate community of our of our followers watching this you know it's amazing yeah it's amazing and i have a lot of catholic supporters like i'm i'm not an enemy of catholics at all like i want to approach these these discussions as truthfully as i can anyways um so if you have a question leave it in the live chat i'm going to be paying attention to it because i'm going to source some of my position and then as matt is summing up his i'll be able to look at the live chat and then throw some comments on the screen so that's what we'll go to in just a minute so let me go ahead and summarize what my view is so my my overall view is that i take a metaphorical reading of john chapter six and i think that's the best place in scripture where you're going to see a very clear very clear evidence in favor of the traditional view so if you just take a a literal reading of those verses and uh i don't actually have them pulled up on the screen i think it's like 53 through 58 if you just take a face face value reading of those scriptures it seems to very clearly teach that unless you eat the blood the body of jesus and you drink his blood then you will not be saved and so as i started to look into this and started to look at what protestants had to say about this i i came across a few different things that i think way in favor of a metaphorical reading of this passage so the first one was that in previous scripture in the old testament leviticus 17 it forbids against the drinking of blood which jesus would have known because he was a jew and so the question then is was jesus sinning when he told people that that they had to drink blood and so i think that that actually weighs in favor of a metaphorical view the second one is that it's it's uh very common for rabbinic teachers back then to use metaphor and not simile so he wouldn't have said this is like you're eating my flesh and drinking my blood he wouldn't say that he would say this is my flesh and this is my blood if he was using metaphor and so this is the kind of language that we would expect if he was using metaphor and then john 6 63 this is the third reason for medical metaphorical view john 6 63 says the the spirit gives life the flesh counts for nothing and what this seems to suggest is that and this comes after the bit that he just that he just gave 53 through 59 for 58 he says the flesh counts for nothing and so that seems to way in favor of metaphorical view verse 58 references bread and in context we can see that the people the disciples were searching for jesus because they'd just been fed and they were hungry again and so in context jesus is trying to teach them that instead of like physical bread instead of fish or loaves what you need is spiritual bread you need the spiritual bread of life that is going to give you eternal life and so you need to believe and have divine wisdom and believe in jesus uh so the the fifth reason in favor of a metaphorical view is that the crowd misunderstanding and i didn't really get into this but the crowd misunderstanding uh in verse 52 i believe when it says is it are you saying that we've got to eat your flesh the jews uh yeah i think it's the the jews that are referenced there the misunderstanding is expected on a symbolic reading given the broader context john 6 isn't a passage describing the last supper john 6 uses the term flesh while the last supper uses the term body when you actually look at the the last supper narratives and matthew mark and luke in john 6 uh it's about sorry i got distracted here by my own writing so the last point that i'll make the last point that i'll make and uh i'm not going to talk about the i'm not going to summarize the philosophical problems but the last point i'll make and i think this is probably one of the stronger points in favor of the metaphorical view is that john's gospel doesn't include a last supper narrative and so if the last supper was intended to teach that it intended to teach a transubstantiation view that the body or that the wine turned into blood and that the bread turned into christ's body then he would have included that he would have included a very detailed account of how that happened so that people could consume his flesh and could consume his blood in order to be saved because john's gospel from beginning to end is an attempt at evangelion at evangelization he wants to and you can see this in the last two verses i've written the things in this book in this book these things have been written so that you may believe that jesus is the christ the son of god and that and that believing you may have life in his name that's the point of his writing this book and so if this is something so crucial which people have to do on the catholic view people have to consume the body and blood of jesus in order to have salvation if this is something that is necessary for salvation then he would have explicitly detailed that as a call to embrace christianity as a call to embrace christ so yeah that's my summary that's awesome thank you so much uh cameron i want to say thanks to our listeners as well like you did um it's i was thinking today why people get so excited about these sort of sorts of things and i suppose people just like conflict because it's so easy just to kind of i don't know be fake and and kind of avoid conflict maybe we're kind of like living by care people are living vicariously through us um so i've really enjoyed it i got a lot of respect and love for you and um thank you to our patrons for supporting the work that we're doing i do pray that this is helpful uh to you guys hey how many points did you have for why it's metaphorical uh i have five five no i had more oh i had more than that let me let me see if i can list five reasons i think it's well maybe gosh we'll see at least five reasons and then something else number one you uh you're right the discourse takes place after the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and what i would say is that this miracle prefigures the inexhaustible gift of christ's own flesh and blood which is capable of being received by millions without being divided or diminished as it seemed that the loaves were as well second jesus claims the superiority of his bread over the manna given to the israelites and here's something interesting the miracle of the manna was enormous every day several million israelites received about two quarts of manna per person and someone did the math this amounts to several hundred tons of manner reigning down daily except for the sabbath for 40 years so jesus says that he will perform an even greater miracle than the manner but the symbolic view that you hold to um i think would be inferior not superior to to to what christ wants to do thirdly everyone who heard jesus understood him to be speaking literally the jews his disciples um fourthly instead of explaining that his listeners were misunderstanding him and he was only speaking metaphorically jesus uses the strongest possible language and emphasizes repeatedly the literalness of his teachings six times in six verses if you read through 53-58 fifthly many of jesus's own disciples won't accept the literalness of his teaching and leave him and again that is after the verse you brought up that some say and maybe you say is meant to explain that this was merely a symbol i would say for those who want to read this as a metaphor to remember that when jesus when people wrongly take him literally he corrects and explains himself or the author of the gospel does and when people rightly take him literally jesus confirms and repeats what he's saying and then finally i want to conclude by just a couple of excerpts from the early christians because i know christian uh christian cameron you don't find this convincing but i suspect that some people some people will so the first christian i want to take a look at is ignatius of antioch who lived in the first century and who we have good reason to think knew john the apostle personally here's what he said in his letter to the smirnians in around 8110 by the way in this letter we have the first use of the term catholic propping up in that verse and he uses it without explaining it which has led scholars to think that the term catholic was used before that or else people wouldn't know what he's talking about and he was using the term catholic to distinguish the church christ established from the splinter groups and here's what he says take note of those who hold heterodox opinions on the grace of jesus christ which has come to us see how contrary their opinions are to the mind of god they abstain from the eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that the eucharist is the flesh of our savior jesus christ flesh which suffered for our sins and which the father and his goodness raised up again now he's talking about the gnostics now the reason the gnostics denied the real presence of christ in the eucharist is because they denied the real presence of christ in christ so you're obviously going to deny the eucharist um cyril of jerusalem in his catechetical lectures in 8350 said the bread and the wine of the eucharist before the holy invocation of the adorable trinity was simply bread and wine but the invocating haven't been made the bread becomes the body of christ and the wine and the blood of christ i could go on and on and on but i will spare people i would say though if you want to hold to the metaphorical view you have to explain away the clear teachings of christ in the eucharist you have to believe that essentially for the first 1500 years christians got it wrong and i just think that's a pill too big to swallow and that's why i think people should abandon the metaphorical view and agree with catholics and orthodox and others who say who talk about the real presence of christ in in the eucharist um all right i'll leave it at that all right let's move to some q a what do you say yeah okay let me scooch back up here and see if i can find one i've got to figure out when i actually started asking for questions and bear with us guys this is our first discussion we we haven't even discussed what we're going to do next time we haven't not even personally behind the scenes yeah okay one thing one thing i one thing i want to affirm you on in this discussion and something i think we can all learn from as we have discussions with other people you've done like at least you've done two things that i think are really admirable and something i want to learn from one you said you know i need to think about that i don't know but i'd like to think about it that that is that shows humility and it's a perfectly reasonable response because none of us are walking encyclopedias uh the second thing you did unless your name is william lane craig right or jimmy aiken the second thing you said that i want to learn from and which i think our viewers should learn from is when you said um you know i don't really like being asked questions like that because like it kind of forces me to you know do this and i just not really comfortable with that as i like to think about that i just thought that was just such a great humble thing to say because it was a bit of a gotcha question because but but it didn't come out of ill will you know because i want to say to a protestant like okay we both want to follow the words of jesus and if jesus meant this you would accept it because you love him so what would what would he have to say so i think it's a legitimate question but i i just like how you responded there with that humility and i think what it shows is that being humble in an adversarial conversation isn't a sign of weakness it's actually it really is a sign of strength and so for that reason we don't have to be afraid of engaging with our atheist friends say if they bring up something we don't know because we can just say yeah that's a really good point i don't know so i'd like to think about that more and you just stop the conversation so for those who are like i always get stressed out and upset if you would just learn i think if we would just learn to be humble we would realize that we really don't need to get upset or lose our call that's it yeah well part of part of that is that i really respect you in a whole lot of ways and so i'm very comfortable i mentioned this before we went live i think i'm very comfortable being vulnerable with you so i'm very happy to be like look i want to learn i i look at you and you probably don't look at yourself this way but i look at you as a very very good defender of catholicism and so i'm very happy to learn as much as i can from from you and so i'm very happy to to do that so sweet yeah very very nice of you to say that i appreciate that are the questions rolling in they there's a lot and i'm trying to figure out how to parse these out uh let me do this one this because this is not a question but it's a nice comment from tracy what what would be cool is if we knew who like where they're coming from or are they coming from from my patreon list are they coming from from your patreon yeah that'd be fun too maybe if people said a question for matt or something well they said yeah they are doing that i think but okay so this question or this comment is great discussion cameron you are pretty cool but i'll align with matt on this so i'm actually scrolling through the comments right now i got my phone okay okay you can see uh this one is from tracy this comment here um someone said benjamin yeah benjamin said i appreciate you guys doing this i appreciate you benjamin jesus okay let me let me scoot down to a question okay uh this is not a question but she's trying to to give a point in your favor she said matt maybe you want to bring up the greek behind john 6 54 trogon yes right and like fa has one very specific literal meaning to gnaw crunch or thank you thank you amy yeah there's so much that could be said that we just didn't get around to and that we wouldn't get around to if we had another couple of hours but in the um in our back and forth i was saying that christ escalates not only the intensity of what he's saying but as amy's pointing out he escalates his language so he moves from uh from faygo i believe to trogon or maybe i've got that backwards but one means to eat and the other literally means to gnaw and chew like an animal so if you look at the greek he's getting not just not only is he repeating what he's saying but he's getting more graphic in what he's saying and that's what amy is pointing out so thank you for bringing that up amy oh i see john 6 54. okay yeah that's where he starts i want to see the more intense language and i forget if someone can tell us which which that is because i don't have greek in front of me i don't have a i don't have any sort of thing in front of me but all right so my view on that would be i would i would be rehashing some of the things that that i've already said because i think that when you use a metaphor you can be very literal and very graphic and still be using metaphor so i think that that is ultimately what it is going to come back down to i'm going to say something that's it might sound a little shitty right it might sound like i'm committing the fallacy of what's it you know the fallacy of like lumping people in with bad company and like pointing at them saying you're like that that's not what i'm poisoning poisoning the world something like that yeah yeah something like that but what i would say is like when you read people who deny the resurrection of christ like richard carrier and others obviously richard carry denies the resurrection of christ because he denies christ um but when you don't read richard carey yeah good idea when you find people who deny the resurrection of christ but who say there was a spiritual resurrection it's very difficult to argue with them because obviously we can find verses of scripture that might make it sound like it's a spiritual resurrection and so therefore they win but if i find scripture verses that seem to very explicitly indicate that he rose from the dead they say well yes but this is this strong language is meant to emphasize how real this was to the apostles and so it's almost like you know heads i win tales you lose and yeah i think something like that here right like if if i'm right and jesus christ is truly present in the eucharist then when i point to a strong passage that makes it seem like christ is truly present in the eucharist a protestant can just say right but this is a metaphor and metaphors can be intense and so we kind of run into a bit of a roadblock i guess so here's what here are my thoughts on that so i'm not out to convince everybody i think that some people are just not going to be convinced so what i'm more interested in or like what are the epistemic standards what what is a good reason what is a good argument and so when i look at this and when i look when i hear an argument from richard carrier that the resurrection was spiritual or whatever i just look at the merits of the argument i don't try to try to convince him that he's wrong i just think what are what are the arguments for his view what are the arguments against and so in in his argument in particular i think that he's wrong and in this argument in particular i think that the the weight of the evidence lies in the metaphorical reading of the text so i i just take it case by case personally and i don't worry about trying to convince everybody because i think some people are just are never going to be convinced no matter what so uh let's move on most of the questions are for me so i wish i had some more for you it's like every question is for me yeah they're all they're all probably my patrons yeah so here's let me get one i'm seeing him too i would i'm seeing some that are interesting uh but i also want you to pick one for you well i'm at the i'm at the the closer to the bottom so i don't know if we're looking at the same uh okay why don't we why don't you pick one and i pick one would that be okay okay this is close to the bottom it's vieira lemon falco you just pick it and i'll look at it is it as somewhere converted yes is that her comment yeah i actually haven't read the whole comment i just like the first line to it she's convert from atheism okay all right let's put it up as someone who was converted from atheism by protestants and now is becoming catholic this debate is very timely for me and i appreciate you both for doing this courtesy courteously with true effort and with true effort thank you yeah thank you vera really appreciate that okay did you have another question that you wanted me to put up on the screen no no so okay i do have okay this is from randy's this one is gonna maybe well actually no it's not gonna take us away okay this one looks like it's gonna be a little bit more philosophical randy scott says as atomist how do you reconcile hilomorphism with the roman catholic understanding of the eucharist how can bread and wine be flesh and blood in substance without any of the essential properties of flesh and blood right so this is definitely a miracle that's taking place in the eucharist no catholic is trying to say that this is uh something simple something easy to believe um physical what's that or physical or like this it's not a physically possible right it's not naturally possible it's a mirror right like the holy spirit does intervene when this takes place and so when we talk about substance and accidents these are fancy sort of aristotelian terms but they don't it shouldn't scare us that they come from aristotle and it also shouldn't scare us that the term transubstantiation was first used in the 13th century at the fourth ladder in council because in the 400s saint gregory of nissa used the language of transmutation and trans-elementation which essentially means the same thing so we shouldn't be afraid of post-biblical language to define and understand doctrines because as i say at 325 at the council of nicaea we use homurusios to understand better that christ is one substance with the father but what we mean when we talk about transubstantiation is that the appearances remain the species remained how it appears to me uh remains while the substance has completely changed if jesus had have said um if he had have said let's think um this contains my body then something more like consubstantiation that some lutherans hold to might be more appropriate if you have said this symbolizes my body then i think cameron's view might be more appropriate but because he said this is my body i think that's why transubstantiation is the best way to talk about it as far as how to reconcile it i i don't really know enough i don't think to give an intelligent and sophisticated enough answer there so i'm going to bail okay uh okay so this one is from elliot brubacher so i i wouldn't i we should probably should have given a caveat at the beginning which we did in our previous discussion that we're not trying to be like the representatives of protestantism and the representative of catholicism here so if we as we get through these questions and i come across something i'm like i don't know the answer to that i'm just going to be honest very very honest about it because i've done the research that i've done and anything beyond that i haven't done i'm just going to be honest okay that out of the way to cameron so catholics worship the eucharist would you say this is a form of idolatry how would you as a protestant approach the morality of this so i'm i'm unclear how it would be a form of idolatry so i'd have to i'd have to really think about that more i'd have to get clear on what what it means to to have yeah and because they're not worshiping they're not worshiping like an a fake god they were still worshiping jesus they're still worshiping god so i'm i'm a little unclear how it would be idolatry maybe maybe matt you could because you that was one of the points yeah maybe you could help flesh that out for me i would say that believing something to be the true god and worshiping it is is idolatry it's no less idolatrous than worshiping something and thinking it's a different god when moses was up the mountain and they collected their earrings and gold and put it together they said this is your god who led you out of egypt so the same argument could be made there i think at best as a protestant i think the best thing you the most kind of generous thing you could say of catholics is okay they are worshiping bread and wine but they've got super good intentions but i think it's still i think it would still i think catholics would be not not just idolaters but the most stupid of the idolaters idolaters to to worship bread and wine yeah to me i think they would just be wrong they would just be wrong about this this fact and so maybe i mean maybe one thing you could think about then is like what is what is idolatry that that's probably the question yeah yeah and i would have to think i'd have to think more about that too but for for me these these types of questions and like questions about tradition like what people have believed and question about like are what are these people doing if it's if the transubstantiation is not true those types of questions don't weigh on me as heavily because i'm more interested in like what does the bible say what is the what is the context what is the best exegesis of this passage and so that that's what really strikes me and that's that's what i'm most interested in is understanding what is the truth about the bible and so secondary still is still important and interesting but it's secondary to me it's like what are the implications of this of this being true what does this imply what are the consequences if this view is true that would mean that a lot of the church history got this particular thing wrong it would mean that catholics have been doing something that they didn't need to be doing for a long time but i i don't think that it's gonna make him not saved or anything like that i think that they just thought that something was literal that wasn't literal so yeah anyways that's how i would respond may i bring up something that one of my patrons has just sent in over my patreon account this is alice and dale who's watching right now she's watching it with a friend and she is she wants to make three quick points i love how quick she does this leviticus 17 10-14 forbids drinking blood because god wills the the blood should be used for atonement and not drinking but if christ as the passover lamb tells us to drink and consume his blood as atonement then doesn't that avoid the old testament contradiction well the problem is these are three questions which you could probably spend an hour responding to but i'll let you there there's the first one uh repeat the repeat that one the last part of it this is what's so difficult to pretend that you like someone could read a very like dense question like that we can just get it and respond maybe some people can um she was basically saying like okay so in leviticus it does forbid drinking blood because god wills the the blood should be used for atonement and not for probably should i probably pull up leviticus 17. i might just read it i might disagree with that though i don't think that blood was forbidden in leviticus because it was meant to be used for atonement and not drinking i don't think that's the reason i think the reason is israel is surrounded by pagan cultures who are literally drinking the blood of animals in sort of worship ceremonies to get sort of supernatural powers i think that's part of it also i think a good response to this would just simply be that it's under a sacramental form jesus christ isn't asking us to ingest blood he's asking us to you know ingest blood under the accidents of wine so uh so leviticus 17 10 says this if anyone hasn't read this verse says i will set my face against any israelite or any foreigner residing among them who eats blood and i will cut them off from the people for the life of a creature is in the blood and i have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar it is the blood that makes atonement for one's life therefore i say to the israelites none of you may eat blood nor may any foreigner residing among you eat blood that's awesome so alison's right so here i was disagreeing with her and then you read the whole passage and she's like basically summarizing the passage sorry about that allison so her point is if chris so given that right that god wills blood should be used for atonement not for drinking but she says if christ as the passover lamb tells us to drink and consume his blood as atonement then doesn't that avoid the old testament contradiction um well i mean reading further in leviticus so here's here's verse 13. any israelite or any foreigner residing among you who hunts in any animal or bird that may be eaten must drain out the blood and cover it with uh with earth because the life of every creature is its blood that is why i have said to the israelites you may not you must not eat of the blood of any creature because the life of every creature is its blood anyone who eats it must be cut off so there can be more than one reason that god is commanding us to drink blood yeah yeah yeah so what's what's interesting here is that we have to kind of reinterpret what's happening this alison should be doing the debate not me oh she's got great points continue so the uh and i'm gonna have to hear what uh you repeat what her question was because i'm still thinking about this this passage and how it relates to catholicism could we move on to her next point or do you i don't want to just throw something out and then dodge to a new question but i also i know we've talked about leviticus so unless you have a lot more to say yeah we can we can move on if she has if she has more stuff to say but we should also mention that we've been we've been going for two hours so we've got to stop at some point all right here i'll just i'll just read one more of her questions and then you can you can pick whatever you want and i think this is a really good point it's something i wish i had said to you in our discussion if we interpret the gospels as complementing each other then the fact that john doesn't have a last supper isn't troubling john was the oldest gospel and the johannine community would have already known there was a last supper also what's the relevant difference between flesh and body apologies if i'm missing something flesh and body uh the yeah so the body of christ could be talking about the the like the body of believers instead of the actual body so it's it's interesting that there's that it what i was saying is that it doesn't go either way it's just an interesting thing so it i think it it opens the door for a metaphorical reading because it uses body instead of flesh which flesh refers to the actual uh and and i think body can be interpreted either way uh that's that's on that point the first point that she made was about the the gospels complementing each other and so the johannine johannan i don't know how to say that theologian uh the people who had read john those people knew about the other gospel accounts and so they knew that the other gospel accounts talked about it so i think that that's a possible response i'm not completely convinced by it because i think that john would have had room and if again his point it it's just a really odd place for this passage to come up about the the the body and blood because what he could have done what john could have done is save that bit and just include it in the the last in his last supper account he could have just like switched places and so he still could have made a very relevant point and he could have just put it over there so i'm not i'm not completely convinced by that i think it does it helps a little bit but i don't think it answers the problem i think there's a very there's still a very serious problem about what john was trying to do and how he he definitely should have included a last supper account all right you want to go to another question or something let me know let me go yeah let me go maybe maybe we could kind of do a bit of a lightning round and give completely insufficient answers to very complex questions i wish i had one that was like hard hitting for you but it looks like someone said lol cameron's face when matt cussed uh okay i'll just pull i'll just oh here we go actually this is this is good and this will be this might be a good one to end on because i think so i i really appreciate it so i i commented on my facebook page earlier today and i was sharing about the conversation and there was a catholic priest i believe i don't know if he's a priest he i i was interviewed on his podcast actually a little bit while ago and he commented and he said it would just make me so sad if this doctrine was false because it's so amazing like to the these experiences that you have while you're do while you're taking mass and so i really appreciate the gravity of the situation i suppose and the vulnerability of how he put it yeah yeah okay so from from emily hernandez she says matt can you share a time when you had a deep personal encounter with jesus in the eucharist or the first time you truly believe that he was literally present in the bread and wine hmm yeah well first of all going back to what your that priest said on your channel i think another question like to put it a different way like maybe to put it more positively i would say to to christians like yourself i would say you know would you want this to be true you know and i just something to think about you know suppose suppose the catholics and others are right i think you want it to be true yeah it doesn't i mean it'd be it'd be yeah it'd be cool to to have some personal right experience with with jesus can i share a time that i've had a deep personal encounter with jesus in the eucharist or the first time he truly believed that he was literally present in the bread and wine so when i was 17 years old and came to christ it really did feel like my heart and mind had been under several feet of ice and that i was like more like a zombie walking around responding to stimuli than somebody who was awake and when i came to christ it sort of reminds me of that passage of song of songs you know where he says you know the snow is is melting the spring is here the turtle dove can be heard in our land come let's catch the foxes you know the little foxes you know tearing up the vineyard or whatever and i tell you what i came back as i've said like one of those christians is so happy it makes you sick i would go to the same parties i used to get drunk at and try and hook up at but this time with the bible and i just want to read it and one of the things i would do is i would i would leave i would skip class at high school and i would just go sit in the chapel before a blessed lord in the tabernacle and i would just sort of pour out my heart to him and and experience his closeness and so i suppose that's kind of a time that that first you know that comes to mind there's something very beautiful about being a catholic and going to what we call eucharistic adoration many churches cameron have what they call 24-hour eucharistic adoration so for 24 hours the host is contained in this beautiful golden monstrance it's called and people come all hours of the night and they'll spend an hour with our lord and just sit in silence and there's just something very beautiful and humble about just going somewhere and just sitting and sometimes when i'm sitting before our lord in the eucharist i think to myself what if he just wants to look at me you know because i'm very distracted but just to sit before our blessed lord and to enjoy his company um so i suppose that's what i would say i've never had any sort of inner locutions or strong kind of supernatural experiences pertaining to the eucharist but hey matt yeah what should we talk about next oh next time well see here's the thing i mean it's it's very difficult because all of this stuff is tied together i i was thinking i was thinking at the beginning of this i'm like okay i don't want to go down the trail of priesthood because you know like if you accept true presence you've got to become a catholic because y'all don't have priests right so like i didn't want to go down there because then we have to start arguing with the priesthood i didn't really even want to go down the line of transubstantiation per se because if catholics are wrong about transubstantiation and you believe in the real presence maybe you should become orthodox you know what i mean so i was trying to kind of like push these things aside so i'm happy to do whatever you want we could take it tackle a big thing like authority or solar scriptura we could tackle something small um like not when i say small i mean i guess less grave like um purgatory let's do this let's do solar scriptura all right i think that's a great one okay um all right man pleasure i thank you so much cameron thank you for everybody out there who's watching yeah and if you guys are the the praying sort which i think you probably are if you want to uh to say a little prayer for myself i'm experiencing some vestibular this i have a vestibular disorder and i think i've i've talked about this on my facebook page but what happens every now and then is i have these these setbacks which are called decompensations where basically i have like in my inner ear something is jacked up in there and it's never going to heal and what my brain has to do is it has to relearn how to balance using my other organs so it has to use my eyes and sense of touch in order to like learn how to balance again and so over time it like your brain learns and it gets accustomed to using these other organs to to balance but in the meantime while you're trying to get there you experience a lot of dizziness a lot of headaches and brain fog and what can happen as well is after you after your brain compensates for the the loss of function in your inner ear you can have an episode of decompensation which is what i experienced about a week and a half ago it brings on a whole lot of very nasty symptoms a lot of dizziness and headaches and everything so i'm very happy that tonight for the most part i haven't really felt any symptoms so i was gonna actually i was gonna blame it on on that if i had done bad in this debate but uh if you guys want to say a prayer for me i would very much appreciate that i'm doing i'm doing okay i'm actually going in for some physical therapy this week to try to to get on a regimen and get a customized workout plan and make things even better and faster and everything and maybe even hopefully uh to the point where this won't happen again so just be in prayer for that if you can it's uh it's a it's a struggle every single day i have some days i wake up and i don't really feel a whole lot of symptoms and other days it's really bad and it's it's really difficult dealing with kids and work and wife and everything else while that's happening so if you can just say pray for me i really appreciate it yeah absolutely okay let's let's do that let's do that right now we ask everyone who's watching in the name of the father and the son the holy spirit dear father i thank you for your son cameron who you love i thank you for his incredible gifts and talents his beautiful wife and kids i thank you that you've called him to come to know you i thank you that he's uh you know helping so many people come to believe in god and i just ask that if it be your will heavenly father that you would heal him of these ailments and that we bring the full work of christ his life death and resurrection in between cameron and any evil spirits or devices that are coming against him if those are the cause of this and we also pray lord that you would give him the gift of patience so that as he puts up with this suffering that he would grow more virtuous more faithful more obedient and not less we ask this in your most holy name jesus amen amen all right brother all right thank you guys for tuning in we'll see you at the next discussion on sola scriptura and we'll announce it on our patreons when that is happening which will probably probably be in about a month so maybe the beginning of july sometime we'll figure it out we'll sort it out and let everyone know but thanks for tuning in thank you for supporting us see you guys later hey it's me again uh actually don't leave yet i've got something super super important to tell you so first of all you're awesome like you you just watched a really really long video just now and you're still watching it that is actually pretty amazing secondly we have hundreds literally hundreds of other apologetics related videos for you to watch on our channel go check them out i've interviewed exorcist hosted debates between christians and atheists i've even made response videos to atheists all of that is available on our channel go check it out third i rely on people that see value in my work people like you that watch videos to the very end to keep the lights on around here literally this is how i feed my family so if you see value in the work that i do please consider supporting this ministry and becoming a patron links to that are in the description oh and uh have i mentioned that christianity is true

Channel: Capturing Christianity

Views: 3,672

Rating: 4.8965516 out of 5

Keywords: capturing christianity, cameron bertuzzi, apologetics, god, atheism

Id: 0tzS3GSPq7s

Length: 126min 52sec (7612 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 16 2021