On the Journey with Matt and Ken, Episode 36: The Real Presence - What Does St. Paul Say?

remember a theology professor saying something like well eat and drink without discerning the body well he just talked about you know people pigging out at the eucharist and what he really means is not discerning the body of christ around you who's lining up to receive like you're what you're guilty of is being rude to the people around you and i knew it couldn't be that i knew that what's going on here is a lot more than just you know taking too much at the buffet with people in line behind you i knew it had to be more than that but i didn't have any context for understanding what it meant to profane the body and blood of christ [Music] well hello and welcome to another pre-possessing episode of on the journey with matt and ken me being matt swaim him being ken hensley and we we are on the journey with you ken how are you i'm doing good good to see you again matt ready to roll like i'm ready to roll also and if you want to go back and find out some of the things that we've done in previous episodes like if you want to catch up on this whole concept of what we're talking about with the eucharist and go back and see the other one go to chnetwork.org you can find not only that episode but also lots of resources for people with questions about the catholic faith uh journey home episodes and a lot more and ken today i'm excited we get to continue on our topic about the eucharist and today we get to dig into john henry newman so well a little bit yeah a little bit at the beginning in fact let me just uh is it all right with you if i launch immediately into to a friendly um rant of sorts i would say launch away my friend okay because this thing with history is just so crucial and i want to put it like this if i had wanted to remain an evangelical protestant i should never have read the first three centuries of christian writings the early church fathers i should certainly never have read the brilliant anglican convert from the 19th century john henry newman it was newman who in his essay on the development of christian doctrine laid down for me really the challenge of early church history something i had thought very little about to be deep in history newman wrote is to cease to be protestant quite a challenge newman said that it was easy to show that the early church was not protestant newman went so far as to assert that if the system of doctrine that i held as an evangelical protestant if that system of doctrine and belief had ever existed that is you know instantiated in any kind of a actual church movement in the early centuries of christian history he said these are his words it has been clean swept away as if by a deluge suddenly silently and without memorial in other words he's saying there's simply no evidence of any christian group in the early centuries of the church in fact not until the time the reformation actually holding the doctrinal system that i held and thought was just quite obvious as a modern evangelical quoting again from newman history is not a creed or a catechism it gives lessons rather than rules still no one can mistake its general teaching in this matter whether he accept it or stumble at it bold outlines broad masses of color arise from the records of the past they may be dim they may be incomplete but they are definite and this one thing at least is certain the christianity of history is not protestantism if ever there was a safe truth it is this yeah i read similar things in uh not just um newman but in chesterton and uh then went back and read some of the church fathers from myself and what's uh what was shocking to me is that my impression had been that it was the opposite case of what newman is indicating here my impression had been that um the early church didn't look anything like the religion of today the early church just looked like a whole bunch of people meeting in rooms eating some sandwiches and going out and helping the poor singing some songs praying together you know sharing their possessions and you got that in the book of acts but you got a whole bunch of other stuff as you're about to indicate yeah and also sure if you want to look at the first week the first month of what would the church be what could it be except christians gathering in homes and and whatnot okay but still things change very quickly and develop very very quickly okay now um you know in this rant what this rant is about is is simply that that that this exposure to the early church fathers is something very very powerful and it's something that moved me very powerfully into a new mindset okay but on to the eucharist i certainly found what newman is saying here to be the case when it comes to the early church's understanding of the eucharist that is you can look at what the early church fathers say and you can say oh well one of them says this one of them says that there are slight nuance and differences and whatnot but as newman says broad masses of color definitely arise from the past and it's clear what is being taught in general in fact a single quotation from saint justin martyr writing around 150 a.d i would say sums up pretty well what you and i saw last week what seems to have been the universal teaching of the church in both the east and the west for really the first 1500 years of christian history this is what justin martyr said for not as common bread or common drink do we receive these but since jesus christ our savior was made incarnate by the word of god and had both flesh and blood for our salvation so too as we have been taught the food that has been made into the eucharist by the eucharistic prayer is set down by him and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nourished is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated jesus okay so the question matt how does a protestant pastor and teacher how does any protestant who has always viewed the lord's supper as a simple symbolic meal of remembrance how does he respond to the challenge of christian history i mean does the voice of history matter is the question and i would have to say most of my evangelical friends would say no it doesn't matter i mean all that matters is what the new testament says or what i perceive the new testament to be saying sola scriptura and the fact that no one seems to have held this some evangelical protestant view of the eucharist that is the lord's supper simple meal of remembrance proclamation the fact that no one seems to have held this view of the lord's supper really until zwingli in the early 16th century doesn't seem to rattle them enough to even make them curious i wasn't able to respond like this i just wasn't able to and really for several reasons that i want to walk through this quickly first is this i had spent years and years matt in the serious i would say academic i would even say scholarly study of the new testament writings i had preached through a number of new testament books verse by verse working directly from the greek text week by week i knew enough about the new testament to know that the new testament first of all isn't a manual of christian doctrine it's just not a manual of christian doctrine that's not what it was written for and that's not how that's not what we find it to be and i also knew enough about the content of the new testament to kind of know in advance that i wasn't going to find some passage in the new testament that i could point to and say oh here it is proof that the early church's view of the eucharist is flat out unbiblical proof that the catholics have been wrong all along and the eastern orthodox the entire church up until the time really of the reformation again second was this it seemed reasonable to me just on basic common sense level it seemed reasonable to think that even as the teaching of the apostles would be reflected in their writings what they wrote so also would their their teaching be reflected in the faith and the practice of the churches they founded and i want to pause you there because this is the thing that this is the two and two that i did not put together like if the apostles are teaching a certain thing and we don't have to worry about the apostles we don't have to worry about the early church we just have to worry about what the apostles wrote down well by thinking that we were coming to the automatic conclusion that nobody's paying attention to what the apostles are saying yeah yeah right basically because that's what you're presuming you're presuming that the apostles taught this stuff but nobody paid attention yeah and therefore like none of the churches they founded were going along with what the apostles actually told you and therefore you can focus your energy 100 percent on the text of the new testament and basically just wave off the faith and practice of the early church even when it seems universal even when it seems unanimous go ahead yeah what if like a few of those churches actually listened yeah there is a possibility you know what if they actually did what the apostles told them to do i mean would that matter well see okay it seemed reasonable to me to think in that way to think that just as their teaching would be reflected in what they wrote yes indeed it would also be reflected in the churches they founded and john henry newman put it like this till positive reasons are grounded well excuse me till positive reasons grounded on facts are adduced to the contrary the most natural hypothesis again common sense the most natural hypothesis is to consider that the society of christians which the apostles left on earth were of that religion to which the apostles converted them this is this is really difficult stuff right i mean he's using kind of like a flowery language but it's a very big common sense kind of thing he says it's the most natural hypothesis then is to consider that the society of christians which the apostles left on earth were of that religion to which the apostles converted them that as christianity began by manifesting itself as of a certain shape and bearing to all mankind therefore that it went on so to manifest itself it is not a violent it is not a violent assumption then to take it for granted before proof to the contrary that the christianity of the second fourth seventh twelfth sixteenth and intermediate centuries is in its substance the very religion which christ and his apostles taught in the first place i i remember reading this and asking myself would not the faith and practice of the early church be a good indicator i mean generally speaking wouldn't it be a good indicator of what the apostles had taught what the apostles had actually told them especially in a case where you find the church's belief in practice to be virtually unanimous and spread throughout the roman empire as we see with the doctrine the eucharist it it seemed imminently reasonable to me to think this and at the same time it did not seem reasonable to me to think that the apostles would teach one thing about the eucharist and then that the entire church would would turn around and teach another thing about the eucharist and without there being any historical evidence of a change or evidence of a struggle evidence of a debate right and we do have evidence of debate on a lot of questions yes um like for instance circumcision which we've spent umpteen weeks talking about in our sola phenomenon we have we have strong evidence of the kinds of things that they did debate over so why wasn't the eucharist one of those yeah you know and the gnostics the docetists all you know on and on and on we know about all kinds of discussions so why is it when it comes to the eucharist if the church departed from what the apostles had taught why is there no evidence of a debate finally it struck me this is that this struck me matt finally it was that what seemed reasonable to me the things we're discussing here clearly also seemed reasonable to the early church fathers saint irenaeus describes the apostles as having deposited their teaching into the church like a rich man deposits his money in the bank and because of this he says christians can come to the church to draw out from the church as from a bank all that the apostles taught quoting irenaeus as i said before the church having received this preaching and this faith from the apostles although she is disseminated throughout the whole world yet guarded it that is this teaching as if she occupied but one house she likewise believes these things as if she had but one soul and one in the same heart and harmoniously she proclaims them and teaches them and hands them down as if she possessed but one mouth clearly irenaeus didn't think oh the teachings of all over the map who really knows what the apostles taught who knows the truth on these matters not at all yeah and and against heresies which he's writing in the late second century he's referring in this whole group of things that the the the apostles deposited in the bank he's including the idea of scripture itself in that mix i mean the canon of scripture is not even established but here saint irenaeus is quoting from scripture probably more than any church father because he trusts it because the apostles are connected with it and have deposited even the truths of the scriptures to the church to safeguard and eventually place into the new testament yeah you're dead on the first great biblical theologian is saint arenas and yet he's the one who says the teaching of the apostles was deposited in the church and you can go there okay my point here with all this in mind reflecting on newman reflecting on the value of history and whatnot i simply did not feel that i could easily dismiss the historical witness of the church as though it shouldn't carry any weight in my thinking you know um i i couldn't wave off 1500 years of christian witness and just say hey none of this matters scripture alone is inspired all that matters is what i think the new testament to be teaching and at the same time of course i was eager to re-examine the new testament passages that touched on the lord's supper questions is flying through my mind you know was there anything in the new testament that might support the early church's view of the eucharist was there anything in the new testament that might prove their view to be unbiblical you know prove the case that yeah the church has simply departed from the new testament and was teaching had an unbiblical view of the eucharist almost immediately and universally which they held for 1500 years so i wanted to look and the place to begin you and i are going to spend some weeks now and we're going to crawl through a lot of themes in some detail but the place where i wanted to start start matt what sort of the obvious was i just wanted to get me over to first corinthians chapters 10 and 11 where we find the most sustained discussion of the lord's supper anywhere in the new testament letters i wanted to just go there and i wanted to read what saint paul had to say in the light now of what i'd seen in the early church and that's what we're going to kind of walk through just briefly today okay yeah and to for context uh very often uh most protestants and catholics when they have a commemoration of the lord's supper what they're quoting for most often is this passage from saint paul in his letter to the corinthians they often i mean even in my churches uh the protestant churches i attended growing up we would quote from saint paul word for word when we would have our commemoration of the lord's supper well in fact that's where we're going to start yes chapters 10 and 11 of first corinthians as i said is the most sustained discussion anywhere in the new testament letters and that's where we'll begin is where you what you just mentioned okay first of all it was clear to me that for saint paul the lord's supper was a meal of remembrance in a meal of proclamation of the death of christ paul states this clearly in first corinthians 11 verses 23 through 26 which is i'm sure the passage that you were just referring to where paul says for i received from the lord what i also delivered to you that the lord jesus on the night that he was betrayed took bread when he had given thanks he broke it and said this is my body which is for you do this in remembrance of me in the same way also the cup after supper saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me for as often as you drink this bread and drink this i mean eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the lord's death until he comes so not much to comment here so far so good as a baptist what i believed so far true you know but of course this doesn't get us very much because the fact is that every single christian body on earth believes this much about the lord's supper that it is a meal of remembrance and a meal in which we proclaim the lord's death until he comes again yeah just uh to for context even the jehovah's witnesses who have only one liturgical celebration a year believe this is this is the one right they believe that they should remember because jesus said do this in remembrance of me so so that this passage is in chapter 11 of first corinthians and it's the most standard passage that as you said that we would read at every celebration of the lord's supper so i began there but then i backed up to the beginning of chapter 10 and i began to read carefully and i immediately ran into something weird okay something a little bit strange to my to the point of view that i had and that i had learned in first corinthians chapter 10 verses 1 through 6 paul uses old covenant israel's experience in the wilderness as a warning of what will happen to his new covenant readers in corinth if they allow themselves to fall into sin and fail to persevere in the faith listen to what he says we usually read this passage with the idea of the warning in mind that that being the focus but listen to what he says i want you to know brethren that our fathers were all under the cloud and all pass through the sea all were baptized into moses in the cloud in the sea and all ate the same supernatural food and all drank the same supernatural drink for they drank from the supernatural rock which followed them and the rock was christ nevertheless with most of them god was not pleased for they were overthrown in the wilderness now these things are warnings for us okay i was familiar with the passage as you are and i was i was very familiar with the basic facts that saint paul relates here these are the facts even though the israelites had been baptized into moses even though they had been given supernatural food and supernatural drink to sustain them on their journey through the wilderness to the land of promise the manna from heaven that is the water from the rock many of them never made it to the promised land okay those are the facts yes and and can just uh for context in my own way that i sort of understood this uh in my own tradition was that these are examples everything this was sort of emblematic of everything that we see in the old testament that the people of the old testament they lived under an old set of rules they messed up in old ways we have christ we're not we're no longer bound by the law and the way that they were bound by the law see these people the reason we have their stories is so if we kind of have this general example of what not to do and how god doesn't deal with us anymore what i never saw is what you're about to point out you mean the positive parallel yeah right exactly okay because yeah i was familiar with these basic facts this is what the passage says okay even though the israelites have been baptized even though they had been given supernatural food they fell dead in the wilderness watch out okay what i had not thought so much about was what was the question of what exactly is paul saying to his readers by relating these facts okay and it struck me at this point that what paul appears to be saying is something like this that is to the corinthians he appears to be saying brothers and sisters you may have been baptized into christ as they were baptized into moses and here's the thing here's the here's the brick in the face kind of you may have been baptized into christ as they were you may have your own supernatural food and drink as they had theirs referring to what what would he be referring to the eucharist but none of this guarantees that you will make it to the end of your journey if you fail to persevere in the obedience of faith what i had never noticed before is that in this passage paul is drawing a direct parallel between the lord's supper and the miraculous food and drink with which god fed the israelites on their journey through the wilderness to the promised land in other words paul is implicitly referring to the lord's supper as supernatural food and drink let me let me paint this in another way or let me say this in another way in other words when the apostle paul thought about the lord's supper because this is what this entire passage is about chapters 10 and 11 it's basically about the lord's supper when the apostle paul thought about the lord's supper he definitely thought about remembering do this in remembrance of me he definitely thought about proclaiming the lord's death until he comes but he also thought about supernatural food supernatural drink given to sustain god's people on their journey through the wilderness of this life the images in other words that came to paul's mind when he thought about the lord's supper were images of water springing up from rocks images of mana floating down from heaven and being gathered every morning it was images of supernatural food i had never made this connection before and you wouldn't make that connection and i didn't make that connection if you were to just pick up a bible by yourself with no experience of any kind of church history and you're just to grab it and read it yeah you wouldn't pick up on that but if you were someone who had been raised in the church in a generation or two after the apostles this is the only way you would ever think of this passage yeah you know because you would have had the context of how the early church lived this passage it also has to do with the lens through which you read it i guess because reading these passages through the lens of i already know what the lord's supper is it's a simple symbolic meal of remembrance it's nothing more than that i just didn't see that paul was drawing this connection between the lord's supper and the manna even though he does so even though he talks as explicitly as one could possibly talk about the lord's supper just a handful of verses later yeah in fact that's the next one we're going to i i moved on then from verses 1 through 6 of chapter 10 to verses 16 and 17 of that same chapter where paul says that when we receive the bread and the cup we share in we participate in we share in we participate in the body and blood of christ this is what he says the cup of blessing which we bless is it not a participation in the blood of christ the bread which we break is it not a participation in the body of christ because there was one bread we who are many are one body for we all partake of the one bread now when i read this passage as a basically a modern evangelical baptist in my theology it seemed obvious to me that paul was speaking figuratively it just seemed patently obvious to me that all paul was saying here was that when we share in the lord's supper we are expressing symbolically our share in the body and blood of christ but now having immersed myself in the mind set of the early church and then looking at this again the thought occurred to me how do i know paul's speaking figuratively how do i know that what if paul is saying here just sort of in just a straight you know way what if he's saying here that when we eat the bread and drink the cup we are literally we are really sharing in the body and blood of christ i looked at the greek word here translated participation it is the simple greek word koinonia which means to share to participate in um to fellowship in it simply means that and so the question now was how do i know that paul isn't saying exactly what the early church said that in the eucharist we share in the body and blood of christ i wanted to jump in here because there's a there's this part of that passage in verse 17 that always kind of mystified me and i never knew what to make of it that when saint paul talks about you know one lord one faith one baptism and then he goes in here says the one loaf like what does it mean like the one loaf the one you know it says the one bread and the translation you're using here uh you know i've been in uh places where the interpretation of that was was that uh what we needed to do at communion is have a baguette right so that however we distribute communion it means that we've got to have it all come off of one loaf of bread right like that was the kind of interpretation of it but if you're looking at it as a participation in the body of christ that this actually becomes the body and blood of our lord jesus christ then even if you're in tanzania or north korea or wherever it is you happen to be if you're receiving communion you're receiving the one loaf because it is a mystical participation in the real presence of jesus christ again this is the kind of stuff that just i didn't know i didn't really know what to do with it but now you see he didn't have that eucharistic theology now you see that you know wow i wouldn't be able to prove this but it fits it totally fits okay i read on and immediately i found paul talking about altars in in first corinthians chapter 10 talking about altars talking about sacrifices and contrasting the lord's supper with the old testament sacrificial offerings and those that are offered on pagan altars this is what he says consider the people of israel are not those who eat the sacrifice's partners in the altar what do i imply then that food offered to idols is anything or that an idol is anything no i imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to god he's going into a lot of details that we're not even going to think about right now the important point is simply to see this he's talking about the lord's supper and sacrificial terms he's contrasting it with other sacrifices on altars paul says i do not want you to be partners with demons you cannot drink the cup of the lord and the cup of demons you cannot partake of the table of the lord and then partake of the table of demons now as we saw last week it was a part of the early church's faith and teaching to view the eucharist as a sacrificial meal that was celebrated on an altar remember we read from jnd kelly the great early church historian where he wrote and i quote the eucharist was regarded as the distinctively christian sacrifice from the closing decade of the first century if not earlier all he means by that is the earliest document that he can find and read which would be that maybe the closing decade of the first century the earliest post-apostolic document is already describing the eucharist in sacrificial terms going on j d kelly malachi's prediction that the lord would reject the jewish sacrifices and instead would have a pure offering made to him by the gentiles in every place was seized upon by christians as a prophecy of the eucharist so this is something we're going to come back to that we're going to talk next week about the eucharist as the new covenant passover so we're going to be coming back to the sacrificial themes my point here is simply to say one thing really as a baptist i did not think of the lord's supper in sacrificial terms at all it was a meal of remembrance celebrated on a table and here's paul in a passage that is all about the lord's supper through chapters 10 and 11 off and on very naturally talking about altars talking about offerings talking about the sacrifices of the old covenant israelites the sacrifices that pagans make on altars and receive that is eat from pagan altars paul clearly thought of the eucharist in sacrificial terms that's the point yeah and as you were saying um you know i i had to laugh when you were saying that you know the earliest post-apostolic documents refer to the eucharist as a sacrifice we have actually earlier stuff than that there if you refer to the eucharist as a sacrifice it's called the new testament well yeah right uh but but if you don't know what you're looking at you'll miss it it's like have you ever been in a room with somebody and they're talking about baseball for like two minutes but it takes you a second to figure out that the baseball is what they're talking about because baseball is the kind of thing that has so much inside language and terminology and you know sort of uh story about it that if you're not paying attention you may not realize oh obviously they're talking about baseball so everything they said for the last three minutes suddenly makes sense yeah right this is the way that the the early church talks about the eucharist uh you know in breaking bread and so many other terms that once you start to see it you start to see it everywhere yeah and you know as i said we'll be coming back to seeing more of this in the new testament i was just reiterating that jnd kelly says from the earliest documents he can find and he's working as a historian meaning post-apostolic it's there explicitly so then okay so then i go on reading a bit and i am reading through chapter 11 the the classic passage that we're all very familiar with where saint paul says this whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the lord 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 without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself that is why many of you are weak and ill and some have died but if we are judged but if we judged ourselves truly we should not be judged okay to receive unworthily paul says is to profane not symbols of the body and blood but it is to profane the body and blood of the lord when we receive unworthily we drink judgment on ourselves paul says here some have become weak some have become ill some have even died now it's possible of course i mean i'm trying to be the level-headed scientific ex new testament exegete it's possible that all paul means here is that when we receive the symbols of christ's body and blood unworthily these things follow we're profaning christ our savior and his and the sacrifice that he offered of himself for us but but here's the thing maybe not matt maybe he's not simply saying here that when we receive the symbols maybe the reason he's speaking in fact in such i don't know profoundly kind of powerful terms you're going to get sick you're going to die is because he views the eucharist as something much more than a simple symbolic meal of remembrance yeah i want to go back to this just for a brief moment um you know i don't know how you would have dealt with that question of what does it mean to be guilty of the body and blood of christ if you receive unworthily um there are a few different ways that i remember kind of trying to understand that in in the places where i receive communions as a nazarene as a free methodist or those are the clearest memories to me and it would be if you're not uh receiving them having examined your conscience and confessed your sins uh then then you are you know committing a form of blasphemy but not blasphemy against the elements themselves you know there was never that indication and i actually i think i hear i remember a theology professor saying something like well eat and drink without discerning the body well he just talked about you know people pigging out at the eucharist and what he really means is not discerning the body of christ around you who's lining up to receive like you're what you're guilty of is being rude to the people around you and i knew it couldn't be that i knew that what's going on here is a lot more than just you know taking too much at the buffet with people in line behind you i knew it had to be more than that but i didn't have any context for understanding what it meant to profane the body and blood of christ based on my personal experience of celebrations of the lord's supper well let me let me try to tie this together i remember going down to the local mall in riverside california when i was 18 19 years old and seeing for the first time one of those images you remember those pixelated images it was a picture oh the three yeah and when you looked at it you saw a dinosaur or something you know you saw a rabbit maybe you did i saw nothing you saw a rabbit and the thing is once you saw a rabbit you could only see a rabbit and yet someone's telling you no no no look at it from a slightly different angle keep staring and you'll see that it's not a rabbit it's a duck and you stare and you shift your eyes around and you look at it and all of a sudden a duck you know arises from the picture and then once you see a duck you can't see a rabbit anymore okay but you're familiar with that idea those kinds of oh yeah they got the same thing with like an old lady and young lady if you flip the picture yeah and i saw one just the other day that someone had shared um somewhere where there are a bunch of plastic bowls of various sizes and they all look like they're upside down but then as soon as you squint you realize they're not upside down they're right side up all of them okay oh yeah or like there's a candle stick where it looks like there's two faces spacing each other or it's a candlestick depending on which one okay you know the idea then all right well this applies in this way as i try to sum this up i had read first corinthians 10 and 11 for years through the lens of my theology that is through the lens of modern evangelical teaching and all i saw in the passage was do this in memory in remembrance of me that's really all there was do this in remembrance of me it's a symbolic meal using bread and wine that's it now i was reading these chapters with a different lens through the lens of the faith and teaching of the early church fathers now i was reading them in the light of the faith and teaching of the church in the first centuries of his existence and really all the way up till the time of zwingli again with some minor transgressions along the way and suddenly i'm seeing something different before i saw a rabbit now i'm seeing a duck you know or the other way around suddenly this is what i see suddenly i see paul comparing the eucharist to the supernatural food and drink that the israelites were given to nourish them on the road through the desert suddenly i'm hearing paul saying that when we receive the bread and the cup we are sharing in the body and blood of christ suddenly i see paul contrasting the eucharist with the old testament sacrifices and the sacrifices offered by pagans and eaten from pagan altars suddenly i hear paul warning that to receive the lord's supper unworthily is to profane the body and blood of christ and to risk judgment on oneself and i want to be just perfectly honest here with you and with those who are watching i wasn't close to saying at this point that the teaching of the early church had somehow been demonstrated by this or was somehow proven to be true i wasn't even close to that at the same time i had to admit that the teaching of the early church was entirely consistent with the things that paul was saying in these passages there was certainly nothing here to contradict the teaching of the early church and to be honest there was much there that i thought kind of supported the teaching of the early church and from here then the this small beginning i knew that i was going to need to really take a more serious look at the entire biblical evidence for the catholic teaching and whatever arguments catholic apologists and historians and biblical scholars could make and so i just began moving forward and that's where i guess we're going to move again next week yeah i remember a very similar experience because you know here i was a guy who had done a whole semester of bible quizzing on first and second corinthians for example as a teenager and you know the all these pieces around um that thing of the lord's supper that you just read from first corinthians 10 and 11. we just assumed that that's sort of like uh it's like the stuff on the warning labels you're like you don't have to worry about most of the stuff what you need to know is just don't drop the toaster in the bathtub don't even worry about this other stuff that's just sort of like extra language and now i started to realize wait maybe there's a way that this stuff was actually concretely treated by the early christians maybe maybe they didn't just like read this whole thing and say well what really matters is that you know you do this in remembrance maybe they took everything in that passage from paul and had a place for it in the context of christian worship and that's sort of scary yeah they had a place for it because paul had taught them when he was with them exactly what the eucharist means and how to do it and all he had taught them and therefore all these little that reading on the page might seem to us just like a little hint here and a little hint there that you can't really prove anything from or you need to kind of yeah yeah oh yeah and it like i say it scared me a little bit um because i thought well have i been flippant about the scriptures i just thinking that this stuff wasn't important that what was important was all the what must i do to be safe stuff and and do i even have that stuff right now based on what i'm finding so yeah it was it's a jarring experience and i'm sure that there's some people watching right now who are possibly going through that sort of jarring process and maybe you have your own questions and maybe what we've said isn't satisfying that's okay don't worry we have more to talk about in this particular series on the eucharist specifically i have one new testament i have one but one more word of encouragement that comes to me that what this taught me is the importance of the importance of understanding that we all look at scripture through the eyeglasses of the worldview that we have been trained in and taught if you will our our tradition our theological tradition and therefore i i guess i would just urge our protestant viewers and listeners you know i just urge you that if you really want to see whether there's something to be said for catholicism you have to be willing to put on catholic glasses but on the catholic lin lenses and really try to see things in a new way because as long as i was just looking at everything through my protestant lenses that's all i saw was protestantism you know it took some work you know stepping into the early fathers really absorbing the mindset of the early fathers and then being willing to try to try on a new set of glasses like you know like okay i'll go back to the bible and i'll put on these other glasses and i'll see what i can see and so it just to encourage my i want to put you have to be willing to step into a world view and really walk around and see it from the inside to begin to perceive its value like i say when i when i did that exercise i was i kind of like ripped the glasses off and threw them in the corner the first few times because i didn't like what i was finding uh but uh as i continued to do it i thought oh suddenly i have a place for these verses in my theology all these verses that i had like just didn't have any place to put them like didn't have anything to do with them they were just sort of junk versus in my mind i hate to be that flippant but that's kind of what they were so especially in regard to this particular conversation yeah if this is something that you've got questions or comments on we would love to hear from you please do uh let us know what you're thinking by uh either way in the comments uh here on our youtube video head on over to chnetwork.org maybe check us out in our online community go to chnetwork.org and click on the link to our community we would love to hear from you in the meantime i'm matt swaim along with my colleague ken hensley thanks so [Music] much [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: The Coming Home Network International

Views: 2,189

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, Faith, REligion, Spirituality, Prayer, Christianity, Lord's Supper, Last Supper, Communion, Holy Communion, Eucharist, Transubstantiation, Zwingli, John Henry Newman, Chesterton, Bread and Wine, St. Paul, Church Fathers, Early Church, New Testament, Church history, Bible Study, Greek, Bible, Corinthians, Baptist, Methodist, Free Methodist, Nazarene, Nondenominational, Restorationist, Sacraments, Liturgy, Catholic, Becoming Catholic, Catholic Convert, The Journey Home

Id: aCv_AzX48YY

Length: 42min 44sec (2564 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 27 2021