John 6.24.-71 – The problems with a literal/physical/transubstantive view
Shawn C. Madden
Within the various ‘traditions’ of the Christian faith, some take a literal view of John 6 and when referencing the Lord’s Supper/Eucharist argue that Jesus’s body is physically present and that we are to physically eat his flesh and physically drink his blood. I do have to add a side note in that in practice the drinking of his blood is very often omitted and it is usually argued that in the host/bread there is present Jesus’s “body, blood, soul, and divinity” thus precluding Jesus’s command to “drink his blood.” That is emblematic of just one of this issues with the transubstantive position. Briefly, the substantiation position argues that the “substance” of the bread is changed to the actual “body, blood, soul, and divinity” of Jesus while the “accidents” or outward appearance remains as bread.
The first problem with this while arguing from John 6.24-71 is that in vss. 49-51 Jesus makes a contrast by comparing himself to the manna in the desert from Exodus. He notes that “your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and they [physically] died” and then he contrasts that with “I am the living bread that came out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.” To be consistent, if, in his contrast Jesus is making a one to one physical comparison with himself and the manna, and if what we find in the mass is a direct reenactment of what Jesus said in these verses and that the bread is transubstanted and then becomes the physical “body, blood, soul, and divinity” of Jesus then you would, to be consistent, have to argue that anyone who physically eats his body will physically live forever. But that is not what we find is it?
In the text of John 6.57-58 Jesus says, “As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever.”
The second problem is a bit cruder. If in fact it has been argued that the host is the “body, blood, soul, and divinity” of Jesus to the point that, as when I grew up, if a host is dropped the only proper person to pick it up and retrieve it is a priest, and there is also the argument that there are accounts of some hosts actually bleeding thereby confirming what it is actually the “body, blood, soul, and divinity” of Jesus. People are arguing now for a catholic return to requiring the host to be taken on the tongue and not the hand as it more shows that the recipient is taking in the actual “body, blood, soul, and divinity” of Jesus.
Then one has to ask, after ingestion, how long does the transubstantive bread remain to actual “body, blood, soul, and divinity” of Jesus? Does it cease to be somewhere along the alimentary canal? Does it remain so even to Jesus’s point in Matt. 15.17 – “that whatsoever entereth into the mouth, goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the privy? (Matt. 15:17 DRA)” and then, do the “accidents” continue to actually be “body, blood, soul, and divinity” of Jesus even through the sewer and remain so as the disconnected molecular pieces of the “body of Christ”?
These then are the problems I see with the transubstantive argument that finds itself being argued using John 6. I notice that John 6 is actually tied back into John 3.16. Jesus makes that point clearly at the beginning of the pericope. In vs. 40 Jesus says, “For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believing in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.” Believing, having faith in him is where one finds eternal life. He reemphasizes that in vs. 63 with, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.”
John 6 is a continuation of 3.16 and points entirely and solely to faith, not physical eating. Those taking the transubstantive position completely miss that Jesus is giving a metaphor of faith with eating. The crowd was seeking a sign and he gave them one.