Does John 6 Teach that Jesus is Really Present in the Eucharist?

well we made it john 6. this should be interesting [Music] well hey guys what is up welcome or welcome back to my channel my name is austin this is gospel simplicity and i am so glad that you are here today truly that means so much to me and today as we do every week we are in one of our life in the word videos and life in the word is a weekly bible study we do here on this channel where we seek to explore and unpack the bible one chapter at a time the goal is to take the best of scholarly insight and make that just really applicable and accessible to your every day life you don't need any curriculum or anything fancy like this you just need the willingness to do some difficult thinking and a bible and the time to observe and see what's going on the goal is that we would see what god was saying in the original context and then see what implications that has for our life now disclaimer if this is the first time you're getting into one of these videos you're jumping into the deep end and maybe start with a different one today we are in john chapter six and if you're not familiar with it john chapter 6 is a very famous chapter and in many ways is the ground for a lot of sacramental theology and thinking about what the eucharist is and the idea that jesus is truly present in the lord's supper or the eucharist or whatever term you want to use there now this is going to get deep and it's it's this might go long if you're out there watching maybe grab some popcorn get comfy because we've got a lot to talk about today and usually i try to cover everything in a given chapter i'm not sure we're going to be able to do that today just because this chapter is one it's so long it's like 70 some verses but also this is going to require some careful theology now i want to give another disclaimer first of all thank you to everyone that has been so supportive and i know many of you have been looking forward to this video and i i'm so glad you're looking forward to it i'm sure it's exciting for you for me it's terrifying but also fun i do love this stuff but the disclaimer that i want to give is i don't think i've ever spent this much time on a life in the word video in prep i also don't think i've ever felt this unprepared for a life in the word video i really went back and forth for a while wondering should i even make this video this week because this is such an important topic and i would hate to not do it a justice because this is the conversation that really matters and i want to do it well but i also know that i could put this off forever and never truly feel adequately prepared to talk about such an incredibly important topic so with that disclaimer we are going to jump into it today and i ask for your grace i ask for your patience and i welcome your feedback below i would i would love to hear your thoughts and i would just appreciate if you would recognize that i'm a full-time student and i don't have 80 hours a week to study these things i've done my absolute best to give this a thorough treatment but it's not nearly as thorough as it can or perhaps should be and i also recognize that there's people that can talk about this a lot better my goal here is to continue through the book of john you're going to come to this the end of this video and i won't have settled this debate and i i don't think it's a realistic expectation of anyone to settle that in one video much less a video that's strictly just about what's going on in a given chapter but i do think there will be a lot for you to learn today so i do invite you to stick around and journey with me through this very important passage now as you're grabbing a bible or a screen to connect to the passage and as always i do encourage you to do that and i'll give you a chance to pause the video here in a second to go ahead and read the chapter but i want to say a big thank you to my patrons subscribers and merch buyers i might have worn the same shirt last week i don't know but anyway thank you so much to all of you that your support truly means so much to me and it's such a privilege to get to make these videos and your support makes that possible so thank you thank you so much if you're interested in any of those things there will be links in the description down below to find more about how you can support this channel well now that you have your bible i'm going to give you a second to go ahead and pause the video read the chapter and we will be right back all right so john chapter 6 starts out with a very famous story in fact it's the only miracle that is found in all four of the gospels which is really interesting to note now it's really tempting to just jump to what is considered the more juicy parts of john 6 but it's really important that we see the text in its context i preach this in every video that i'm sure you're sick of hearing it at this point if you watch all of them but you know that i am passionate about the context because if we take a text out of its context it becomes a pretext and we don't want to do that so the first layer of that context is just the basic literary context so it's very important that we start with where it is and if you're new to the series and you want more of the historical cultural context to the book of john in general we'll go back to perhaps chapter one and as well you're going to see in this that we are up in galilee he's jesus is actually on the sea of galilee if you want a little context on capernaum and galilee i went over that in chapter two because that's where jesus is at the wedding in that chapter in any case we're going to jump into it here we find that jesus he's up in galilee and there's a large crowd with him and it's interesting to note why the crowd is with him the crowd is with him because of the signs he's doing and that's going to be coming back in this chapter that that they're following jesus not necessarily for who he is but for what he's doing and right off the bat we see that this is not what we want to be doing as followers of jesus we don't want to have a relationship with god just for what he can do to us but we want to love god for who he is much like your interpersonal relationship so it doesn't feel good that people just like you because you can give them a ride to the train station or whatever like it should be a genuine love there but we're not going to go too far down that rabbit hole and a really interesting point of context though that we want to pick up that's going to be relevant to the entire discussion we're having today comes in verse 4 and that is that it says that now the passover now the passover the feast of the jews was at hand again i say this oftentimes but it's a good axiom for biblical interpretation the biblical authors don't have to tell you anything in fact they're very often very scant in their details they don't go out of their way to paint these vivid pictures and give you all this background like some writers today like to do they're very minimalistic if you will but in that when they give details they're very important so it's worth noting that from the very beginning john is setting this this whole chapter this whole literary unit in the context of the passover the passover was an incredibly important feast for the jews it commemorated the exodus which is going to show up in many ways throughout this chapter so we want to be thinking in our head about the passover feast and the jewish exodus that we find in well the book of exodus as well we're going to see some stuff about the manna and there's a lot going on here so have that in your mind because it's really going to shape this text so with that in mind we see that it's around the time of the passover john gives us this interesting detail and then jesus performs this incredible miracle and if you grew up in the church or maybe even if you didn't you might have heard of this and it's this really interesting miracle where jesus takes just a few loaves of bread and fish and multiplies them to feed 5 000 men plus the women and children it is an absolutely astounding miracle one thing that's really interesting to note about this miracle is how exactly it comes about at first jesus says that you know we need to we need to feed all these people and his first disciple the first one to respond philip he says 200 denarii worth of bread would not be enough to for each of them to get a little and a daenery that's like a day's wage like there's no like we have nowhere near the amount of money to feed all these people the first thing he sees is the problem but then it's really interesting that one of the other disciples we find in verse 8 andrew simon peter's brothers said to him well there is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish but but what are they for so many and so he does he backs away from it a little bit but do you see the contrast between philip and andrew here philip initially sees the problem whereas andrew he says you know what we do have something often we when we see a promise we say it's impossible and granted it may be very difficult it may be improbable but andrew says well we do have something and then he takes that to jesus who can multiply our humble offerings and this is such a beautiful picture to me that jesus can take even the smallest of things that we have to contribute and multiply it to bless others in an incredible incredible way now this passage is not only about the faith of andrew and i'm not even sure it'd be fair to say that's central to it but what we do certainly see is jesus is multiplying power and all throughout the book of john john is making the case that jesus is the christ the son of god and then if you believe in him you will have life in his name and so what he's showing here once again is jesus miraculous power but he's also showing an interesting thing and that around this time many people would have been looking not only for a new messiah but for a new exodus to be marked by this messiah and one mark of the exodus was the miraculous manna that fell from heaven and here we have jesus providing food for all these people so not only is it this great thing that jesus can miraculously provide food and points towards his divinity that it's all great but it also points to his person of what his unique role is in it and the prophetic things that he's fulfilling in this sense now at the very base level if one person can feed 5 000 people i'd want to make him king because i think we all you know we we are often motivated by our stomachs but there is something more powerful here that idea of who the messiah would be and what he would do with the new access exodus and the way that links back to the manna which is just such a visceral reminder of of what the exodus was in this high point in jewish history and so understandably after this the people want to make jesus king but instead instead jesus jesus has every opportunity to seize power here but that's not what jesus came for jesus he was here to start a kingdom but not anything like they were expecting he was coming to flip upside down their conceptions of power their conceptions of kingdom their conceptions of what it truly means to be great and jesus says this is not what my kingdom looks like my kingdom is not just this populist movement where everyone's going to say how great i am because of the power that i have but rather i will show my power in weakness and that will be what marks my kingdom not my miraculous ability yes that is part of it and yes that is real and yes that is true but that is not what jesus is leading with in his kingdom the next section that we see here is kind of interesting in that it seems a bit disconnected but i think there is some interesting symbolism going on here and that is verses 16 through 21 we see jesus walking on water now if you've been following along with these videos i've been outlining a bit of a biblical theology of water going on in the book of john now this is not something i anticipated when i started getting into john and it's not something i'd ever picked up before i'm still honestly working through my thoughts on what john is doing with this recurring water motif that just won't go away and i think there's something in it that might climax with the blood and water that flows from jesus side at the cross and i think there's some really interesting things there as we think back to like the new eden that jesus is creating and the overtones with genesis but i don't want to go too far down that and we really don't have time for that today but in any case we see jesus here walking on water when when evening comes the disciples they get into the boat and they cross the sea of galilee but jesus isn't with them but then all of a sudden jesus walking on water comes out to them and understandably they're a little freaked out i mean i've never seen someone walk on water have you i think i'd be a little concerned if i saw that and it's interesting i mean jesus it's not it's not a close walk if you notice they said when they had rode about three or four miles that's a hike walking across water jesus isn't like just skim boarding across water as though he could kind of like feign it for a second until he started going down he is going far on this and it's really interesting but in any case one of the most important symbols that we see here as just as with the miracle of making of multiplying the loaves and we have these overtones of the manna and that idea of a new exodus here well if we remember the exodus the the israelites they cross the red sea and ju and god makes a miraculous way for them to cross this body of water now isn't it interesting that in this very same chapter juxtaposed seemingly out of place in just this random miracle we find jesus miraculously crossing water in a context that is linked with the passover which has had would have just occurred before crossing of the red sea and then let's talk about mana which would come on the other side now there is a little bit of a chronological difference here but i think there's something going on here at the very least it's worth thinking about but on a more practical level i want you to notice something that jesus says in verse 20. he says you know they they see him and they were frightened we find out the verse end of verse 19 but he said to them it is i do not be afraid now i'm not trying to dig too deeply into this but there is something beautiful here that that the very notion is it is i do not be afraid you know you know i'm a sucker for rhymes and i've talked about it before but why i think they're so helpful and this one a little cheesy i'm just going to give you a warning but i do think there's some power to it and that is do not fear when jesus is here and jesus is always present so do not fear jesus is here or do not fear jesus is near you know our fear it is so often rooted in a sense of the absence of god if you truly believe that god was present with you then then whom shall we fear if god is for us then who shall be against us that the perfect love of god drives out fear and so when we know that jesus is near we have nothing to fear there's just a little nugget for you from that section and now moving into verse 22 we move into what is famously referred to as the bread of life discourse this is really where the rubber is going to meet the road i imagine this is what some of you have been waiting for in fact some of you might have skipped ahead to this part and that's cool i get it but the bread of life discourse now there's a whole lot riding on this passage in many ways but one thing i want to clear up from the very beginning is that and i know many of my audience are catholic and and that's great and i've been loving having these dialogues but what i think is sometimes overlooked in in protestant catholic or protestant orthodox dialogue on this or even intra-protestant dialogue because some protestants do believe in the real presence of christ in the eucharist is the idea that john 6 is either literal or metaphorical and i think that's fundamentally a bad way to approach this if if i was a catholic i would i would not want to take that heart of a line and i don't think you should because i think what we have is not between metaphorical and literal interpretations of this passage but a solely metaphorical interpretation verse metaphor plus a literal aspect going on you may or may not agree with me on that but i think it's worthwhile to think about as we go through and i think it might clarify this discussion just a little bit but going into the passage we have a couple things going on the the crowd finds jesus and and when this happens when they find him on the other side of the sea they they're seeking him eagerly and i think there's something beautiful in that but we see jesus calls them out immediately that they're not seeking him he says truly truly i say to you you are seeking me not because you saw signs but because you ate your fill of the loaves you're seeking me for what i can do for you and that's fundamentally the wrong way to approach jesus and then he begins to talk about the bread again now if it wasn't clear in the miracle that jesus was talking about the manna well it comes out explicitly in this section but jesus tells them do not work for the food that perishes then he draws this contrast but for the food that endures to eternal life which the son of man referring to himself with overtones from daniel 7 will give to you for on him the father has set his seal widget which is this really like this monarchical analogy which is really powerful and having the seal of the king anyway it's important but not important for what we're doing right now and what we see is that they ask like what are these works and jesus talks about well the work is to believe in him now one thing that people who opt for a metaphorical reading of this like to point out is that there is a really strong parallel between what jesus describes as the benefits of believing in him and the benefits of eating his flesh and they say because it's talked about in such parallel terms this must be synonymous eating his flesh must be the same as believing in fact i want to give you a little quote to represent this side that is from d.a carson in his commentary on the book of john and he says and skipping down a little bit verses 54 and 40 are closely parallel whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and i'll raise him up at the last day everyone who looks to the son and believes in him shall have eternal life that will raise him up at the last day the only substantial difference is that one speaks of eating jesus is flesh and drinking jesus blood while the other in precisely the same conceptual location speaks of looking to the son and believing in him the conclusion is obvious the former is the metaphorical way of referring to the latter now i know at that point many of you might be saying whoa whoa d.a carson you were going way too far this brings me back though to a bit of the idea that there could be metaphor and then more going on as well and that was kind of a subtle rhyme that i didn't mean to get to but anyway i wanted to to give you that in your mind here because as we enter into this discussion we see bread coming up all the time and in verse 35 we have a really key point that after jesus has gone back and forth with them we find one of the seven i am statements in the gospel of john john has famously and many scholars have done great work on this that he has arranged the book around these seven i am statements that i am the way the truth and the life i am the door and the gate i am the good shepherd and so on and so forth and here we find that after he's talking about this bread and they've talked about the bread from heaven which is using the same language as back in exodus jesus said to them i am the bread of life whoever comes to me shall not hunger and whoever believes in me shall never thirst now again what's something that d.a carson here and other people who are proponents of a more metaphorical approach would say is that it's not whoever eats me shall not hunger and whoever eat it drinks me shall never thirst whoever comes to me and whoever believes in me shall never thirst now at the very least what i want to point out here is that there is a definitely a stream in this in which jesus is talking and really making a big point about the importance of faith here he's saying you know what what is the work of god to believe in the one who he sent what what does it take to to never thirst and never hunger to believe in me and it's certainly a key motif that can get lost here now there's several things that we could look at in the next few verses where it talks about that you know the father draws and all who the father draws will come to me and i won't lose any and we could talk about the ideas of perseverance of the saints or monarchism and they're all fantastic discussions i just don't have time for that today but what we see right now so far is we have this case that jesus is certainly making a strong point about believing in him now catholics don't don't click off yet there is more here because what we see as it goes on and jesus is talking about this this importance of believing in him and that he will raise them up well the the jews begin to to grumble a bit it says and they say well how are you this bread from heaven and what is going on and and jesus doesn't relent on this this metaphor if you will that he is the bread of life he he just continues to hammer it away contrasting himself with the manna that was eaten in the desert by their forefathers he says if you eat of me you will not die i'm the living bread that he that came down from heaven anyone eats of this bread he will live forever and the bread that i will give for the life of the world is my flesh now we do have this sense of okay he's not relenting on this bread analogy and he's saying that the bread is not just belief in him but it is his flesh now is that saying that we need to eat that flesh well let's continue to look jesus says in verse 53 truly truly i say to you unless you eat the flesh of the son of man meaning himself and drink his blood you have no life in you he's really using this verbiage of something that is required here and he just continues to go on it whoever feeds and here he actually shifts greek words to use almost like this chewing verb whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and i will raise him up on the last day again using synonymous language with belief whoever feeds whoever believes and jesus is going back and forth now some would say as d.a carson says this points this is merely the metaphorical way of referring to that same belief because it's saying the same things however others would say well jesus is clearly saying you have to do this i'll weigh in just give it some time again it continues to go whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and die in him and then it's interesting to note what happens next as jesus continues really pressing this and pressing this he doesn't relent he in fact he allows the whole crowd to leave over this and they say we can't do this and of course they can't do this they're good jews they're like how could we eat flesh and drink blood like you know us we're jewish we don't drink blood but it is worth noting that in the context of the passover the passover lamb was not merely sacrificed but they did eat the passover lamb now there's other things going on here with the blood and everything but when we read in that context of the manna and the passover and the crossing of the sea we can see that it's plausible that there is some idea of eating the flesh of this passover lamb which is sometimes drawn out in the gospels now one thing that people have a more metaphorical approach will point to as very significant is that after this has gone on and now jesus is talking with his disciples the disciples are like lord like this is a hard teaching who can accept it and he's asking like oh so are you going to leave two it's interesting that in his clarification note in verse 63 he says it is the spirit who gives life the flesh is no help at all the words that i've spoken to you are spirit and life now many protestants will say case closed he's obviously saying that these are just he's talking in spiritual language and this is merely a metaphor now let's go again though what catholics and others can say is that well yes there is metaphor here but there is something more so the burden of proof is really to prove that there is not something more going on here but jesus's words here certainly do throw a wrench in that and it is interesting now it's worth noting and i'll bring up john chrysostom here that when he interprets this in one of his homilies and i believe i have a note on it um in here but i'll i'll put it down below or on the screen what homily it is but he's saying you know is he saying that his blush cut counts for nothing he would say oh no no no that's not what he's saying but he's saying when we think in merely carnal ways it accounts for nothing we must be thinking in spiritual terms but but we dare not say john chrysostoms says that the flesh of jesus accounts for nothing and i think well we can all agree with that certainly we don't want to become gnostics that say you know jesus his flesh was bad or docetis let's say he actually didn't have flesh so we want to be careful there to not affirm something that even we as protestants would say we're not on board with that okay so now with all of that in mind it is time for me with fear and trembling to begin to work through some of the problems here and start to propose what my interpretation of this is and again thank you for your patience and your grace i need it in hoards so there's a couple interesting problems to note in this passage the first and it's a question we've brought up many times is is this just a metaphor on the side of perhaps it is is the idea of the parallelism also the fact that when we look at the other i am statements of jesus like jesus is not literally a door he is not literally the gate in a robustly like um just a rigid way and so people would say jesus talks a metaphor all the time this is just another one of those metaphors now against that i would add as many people have jesus seems to really press into this he allows the whole crowd to leave and he says many times with statements like truly truly i tell you unless you eat of my flesh and drink of my blood you have no life in you and he even uses verb he changes the verb there talk about like almost chewing on his flesh like gnawing on it and so i would say those are some points against the idea that it's merely metaphorical but just between those two it could potentially go either way i can see both arguments again on this side i would also add that jesus is willing to lose the whole crowd over this now something that's worth noting though is if we read this book only in the context of the book of john unlike all of the synoptic gospels john does not have a robust moment and during like the in the passion scenes and right before at the last supper we don't have the institution narratives we we don't have jesus saying this is my body broken for you this is like my blood like we we don't have that so only in the book of john we would we would expect that if he's talking about the eucharist here that he would really draw on that later and it's interesting that he leaves that out however there's even more here going on that there is a bit of anachronism and if you're not familiar with that word it's a great word and it means attributing something from one time period without um justification to another period so it would be an anachronism to say that abraham lincoln was sitting in the oval office when he got a call on his smartphone and he's talking or he's making his tick tock like that's anachronistic that he didn't have a smartphone and he definitely didn't have tick-tock so people would say and this is something carson draws out that that it's a bit anachronistic to say jesus is talking about the lord's supper here if we put this on a timeline during jesus ministry at this point jesus is talking about eating his flesh and drinking his blood but and it doesn't even occur in the gospel of john but if we line it up with other gospels it's not for a little bit yet that we actually have the lord's supper so people would ask and i think rather fairly well how can this be talking about a thing that hasn't even happened yet if he's telling these people that they need to eat his flesh to have life well what's their next step if it's not like believing in him well are they supposed to just know from this that they're supposed to partake of the lord's supper i mean yes john puts this in passover terms but jesus hasn't even instituted this new covenant yet so how could it be about that however i wouldn't say that's without answers to that but it just does require a different reading of the gospel of john the first thing it would require is a canonical reading in that we read john in light of what the synoptics have to say john didn't write this in a vacuum while scholars disagree over whether he was using material for matthew mark or luke most not most but but some propose and i think fairly well that he was at least familiar with mark and i would say him being a churchman there's a decent chance he would have had familiarity with the others but that can get us into an interesting place well it was but john is making a claim that this is what jesus actually said so at the best it could be said that well they're interpreting it and he's expecting his readers to read it in light of this other content but we can't say that or at least i don't want to say that well john merely is putting these words in jesus's mouth anachronistically before it would even occur now the other thing is that we can read this and assume a church there's debates over whether you know did the bible found the church did the church find the bible to what extent is john writing to an audience that would have had just like this fully fledged church at john's one of the later gospels so i think it's more reasonable that he's writing in a time in which there is a fairly established church which they would have been partaking of the lord's supper so he would have expected them to hear those overtones but again to say that here is the prime argument for the lord's supper being in the real presence of jesus is there's at least something to work through there and so i want at least to challenge people to think that through and again one of the other things that's difficult is where jesus says that the flesh counts for nothing but we have already looked at that in the work of john chrysostom now what are my thoughts on that with with all of this going on the question i imagine a lot of people are asking is so is this saying that you have to eat jesus's blood or eat jesus's flesh and drink his blood literally and that the way we do that is through the eucharist and if you don't well then it's not valid and perhaps you don't have life in you and maybe you wouldn't go that far but but we want to know that question about the eucharist so here are my very measured and reserved thoughts i'll start by quoting colin brown and he writes john 6 is not about the lord's supper rather the lord's supper is about what is described in john 6. now there's different ways you could take that but what i want to say at the start is that i wouldn't i wouldn't hang all of my sacramental or eucharistic theology on john 6 because it does require certain assumptions and john doesn't give us the lord's supper and it's before the lord's supper so what i think i would be more comfortable saying is that the lord's supper you know it's connected to this and this draws greater significance and maybe foreshadows that but this jesus right here he's not specifically in a robustly rigid or and he's not like directly speaking to all of our questions about sacramental theology and i'm not even sure this text is the the only arbiter in that conversation i don't think we want to hang too much on it but it certainly is significant now the thing for me that makes interpreting this passage more interesting is that that i can i can do the exegesis i am not that i'm like world-renowned at it or anything but but i've got the tool the hermeneutical tools and the resources and the skills to go through a passage and see what's going on there and try to make my best interpretation of it however we're not the only people to have done this and it is important to see how the church has historically understood this and that's where i think the side of the real presence in the eucharist really begins to get some credence now because this video is about john 6 i don't want to go too far afield here and perhaps one day in the future i can make a video specifically just about different views on the lord's supper and what i think is most probable but i do want to at least i think it would be remiss to not talk about the patristic evidence for a belief in more of the real presence here john chrysostom in homily 46 talking about this specific passage he says wherefore this also christ has done to lead us to a closer friendship and to show his love he has given to those who desire him not only to see him but even to touch him and eat him and he gets really visceral here to fix their teeth in his flesh and to embrace him and satisfy all their love let us then return from that table like lions breathing fire having become terrible to the devil thinking on our head and on the love which he has shown for us clearly chrysostom thinks there's something significant going on here and i invite you to read that entire homily and and the corresponding ones for the rest of the chapter but here's where i think we have to be very careful when espousing a metaphorical view is that and it's it's not without any precedent but the oh the early church overwhelmingly saw this passage in similar ones as pointing towards the real presence of christ and the eucharist now i i want to i'll bring up cyril of jerusalem here in his catechetical lecture 22. that's a hard word to say something i will sometimes see protestants quote will be paragraph four of this where it says christ on a certain occasion discoursing with the jews said unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no life in me quoting john 6 53 they have not heard his saying in a spiritual sense they not having heard his saying in a spiritual sense were offended and went back supposing that he was inviting them to eat flesh protestants says yeah here's cyril an early church father saying like he's rebuking the jews for thinking they actually had to eat flesh how silly but if we go down into paragraph nine he says having learned these things and having been fully assured that the seeming bread is not bread though sensible to taste but the body of christ and the seeming wine is not wine though the taste will have itself but the blood of christ clearly cyril believes in the real presence in the eucharist now how he works that out might not be with great precision and i'm personally of the conviction that i think sometimes we can over define what's going on here but at the very least let's be honest in the quotations and let's own up to the fact that the early church seems to have a a high view of real presence in the eucharist ignatius speaking on it speaks very eloquently he says consider how contrary to the mind are the heterodox in regard to the grace of god which has come to us they have no regard for charity none for the widow the orphan the oppressed none for the man in prison the hungry or the thirsty and then building off this all those things that we can all agree are bad he lumps into the same category they abstain from the eucharist and from prayer because they do not admit that the eucharist is the flesh of our savior jesus christ the flesh was which suffered for our sins on which the father and his graciousness raised from the dead now if you're out there and you're saying okay what's it matter what this ignatius guy says well ignatius was a disciple of john who wrote this book now is it possible to distance yourself very much from your mentor absolutely we see that in modern theology many times we see you know students of bart going in a completely different direction or we see we see this happen so it's not unprecedented but it but it's worth noting that this bishop who has been seen by the church for all of history to be incredibly orthodox and is a saint in the catholic and orthodox church i believe um a disciple of john that they're claiming it is in step with what john teaches who who would have learned from the disciple himself says that that this is the flesh of our lord and that was in the letter to the sumerians uh paragraph six and then into the ephesians he says come together in communion one at all without exception and charity and one faith and in one jesus christ it was the race of david according to the flesh the son of man and the son of god so that with undivided mind you may obey the bishop and the priest and break the bread which is the medicine of immortality the antidote against flesh enabling us to live further forever in christ and like i said that was in the letter to the ephesians so where in the first one we see him pointing that this is the real flesh well then in the second we do see him pointing to and this has consequences for eternal life now for one final quote from the church fathers i i think it's interesting the way augustine treats this passage and we can see that in tractate 26 and honestly i think that the tractate itself is a little obtuse in many ways and difficult to understand but augustine while he'd certainly had a sacramental theology and i'm not trying to make augustine some proto-protestant that believed in a metaphorical view i you're looking at the wrong guy to try to do that if you want to try to do that maybe try to do it with tertullian but i don't think you're going to be able to argue it that well but augustine says for even we at this day receive visible food but the sacrament is one thing the virtue of the sacrament is another and when he also talks about it in that tractate a little earlier on he says believe and you have eaten. when augustine looks at this chapter he clearly talks about sacraments however he seems more concerned i would say with the idea of believing in jesus and in this passage we do see both ideas featuring prominently that believe and you will have eternal life to do the work of god is is to believe and he's saying you know it which is interesting giving his some of his other theology but he's he says you know like if you don't believe then you're just you're eating judgment upon you then this isn't good for you like like if you don't believe that then what is the point of any of this so i bring up these quotes to say in augustine we see him yes pointing to the sacrament but pointing behind it to something even bigger which is belief in jesus and cyril we see this kind of this tension of saying you know they thought it was his flesh and they were wrong in some way but it truly is the body and blood of jesus and so it's not over defiant and and there's space to talk about that in that way and and i think some calvinists would say it might even give space for something like a more spiritual presence but we're not going to get into that i'm not sure that's actually justified but we do see in christian and others and you can go through many many church fathers that that they saw in the eucharist at least the real presence of christ so to bring this all to conclusion what i would say about john chapter 6 is that primarily jesus is talking about the priority of believing in him he does this through a metaphor of talking about the bread of life while also leaving open the door that there is more than just a metaphor here in light of the context which talks about the passover and the manna and we see overtones of the crossing of the red sea we see this new exodus the talk of the bread of heaven the passover lamb which would have been eaten well i think john has framed this in such a way to give light to the later idea of the eucharist and that perhaps jesus is speaking here in a way that is foreshadowing what people will learn in the future however to hang all of our eucharistic or sacramental theology on this text seems to be a bit of a stretch giving the fact of the timeline given the fact that the lord's supper hasn't been instituted and given the fact that john never even tells us about the institution of the lord's supper and the new covenant in that way that we see in the synoptics so austin what do you believe about the eucharist well i'm still figuring it out i have a lot of questions i grew up with the interpretation that is merely metaphorical that all we are doing is remembering jesus and it doesn't really matter how often we do it we did it about once every six weeks i sympathize with that view i think the burden of proof is a little heavy on that view on that view you have to argue against nearly 1 500 years of church history as well as what seems to be some fairly strong language by jesus here in john chapter 6. as far as the real presence of christ in the eucharist i think there's something going on there i think there's more i need to investigate do i think we can over state it do i think we can over define it do i think it's been sometimes used in such a way to diminish the importance of belief which jesus yearly clearly saw is important here i do do i have a lot of questions yes am i currently reading books on this yes and i want to give a big shout out to dr bryant petrie's book which has really helped me as i formulate my thoughts on this so i ask for your grace your patience as i sort through this idea i have lots of questions feel free to ask me questions in the description i'll probably give you unsatisfying answers because my thoughts are developing but i think at the very least it's not improbable that there is some type of presence of christ in the eucharist how does that work i have no idea and i'm working on it well thank you guys so much this was a long video a really long video and i if you watch this whole thing you i mean shout out to you you win congratulations i feel like i should like send you a cookie or something and congrats thank you so much in any case really just thank you for watching this if you're interested in this channel and what we're doing here we're passionate about beautiful simplicity and transformative power of the gospel and if that's something you two are passionate i would encourage you to hit subscribe down below to become a part of what we're doing if you want to become a part in an even bigger bigger way i invite you to become a patron whether for 5 15 20 50 a month whatever works for you if you want to support this ministry and get access to some really cool stuff and really just help me in such an incredible way then go ahead and click that link or go to patreon.com gospel simplicity if you want super cool and comfy merch like this there will also be a link down below for that until next time guys i want to encourage you to be on the lookout for more videos and as always god love god love others because truly above all else that will change the world peace i love you guys so much i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Gospel Simplicity

Views: 51,365

Keywords: Eucharist Debate, Protestant John 6, John 6 Bible Study, Real Presence, Transubstantiation Debate, Catholic Bible Study, Catholic Convert, Lord's Supper Study, Brant Pitre, Jewish Roots of the Eucharist, John 6 Debate, Catholic Transubstantiation, Who's right about the eucharist, understanding the eucharist, understanding John 6, Gospel Simplicity, Austin Suggs, Life in the Word, Evangelical Bible Study

Id: M1-8AWNaiSc

Length: 44min 3sec (2643 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 10 2020