Wednesday, September 25, 2024

Real food. . .

Having come off the series of John 6 Gospel readings for Series B, I am more and more convinced that it is nearly impossible to meet these texts without understanding them Eucharistically.  Yes, I know.  Luther did not mince words in rejecting the idea that John 6 addressed the Lord’s Supper: “In the first place the sixth chapter of John must be entirely excluded from this discussion [of the Supper], since it does not refer to the sacrament in a single syllable. Not only because the sacrament was not yet instituted, but even more because this passage itself and the sentences following plainly show, as I have already stated, that Christ is speaking of faith in the incarnate Word" -- as 1FC SD VII, 41 quote.  Chemnitz summarized the catholicity of Luther’s interpretation, which Luther claimed was simply Augustine’s -- and, for that matter ecumenical since also Cajetan and Calvin agreed.  Lutherans were rather content on the issue until Wilhelm Loehe advocated a more sacramental interpretation.  Both Warner Elert and Herman Sasse followed suit.  It should be noted that Luther was not above using John 6 in his sacramental piety, especially, for example, in the hymn text Christ Lag in Todesbanden.  

While it is not quite dangerous to conclude that John 6 is Eucharistic, it could dangerous to insist that it could not be.  John 6:63, flesh is of no avail cannot be used against our Lord's own institution of the Sacrament of His Body and Blood.  Luther is careful in his debate with Zwingli to avoid this trap but many on the Radical Reformation side are not.  Jesus is not so careful, however, on the other side.  Jesus pushes every button and ends up with an emphatic to intensify His point: “Amen, Amen I say to you,” as if to say:  “Let me be perfectly clear.”  Then He does the unthinkable.  He also switches words from a rather  polite word for “eat,” φαγεῖν (phagein), to τρώγων (trogon), a more graphic word which suggests gnawing on or chewing His flesh.  This is then no symbolic or imaginary eating and drinking but the literal one which, when done in faith, receives what it promises.  Our Lord precisely places the real eating of His flesh and blood in faith in the context of the real eating of the manna in the wilderness -- one of which could sustain life for day but the other feeds the food upon which one eats and never dies.

In the end, it would seem to be a particularly Lutheran thing to do to read John 6 sacramentally,  as David Scaer has noted:  "John 6 is the chessboard on which the traditional hermeneutical rules are either ignored or shown to be inadequate. In making John 6 a discourse on faith, the unus sensus literalis est―which interprets “eating” as really “eating” and not “faith,” and “flesh” as really “flesh”―is replaced by a purely allegorical interpretation in which these words are given a different meaning."  In the end, it might require suspending the mind of all prior knowledge to read John 6 without automatically thinking of the Sacrament but it would also suspend all credibility to read it without also requiring the faith that receives this flesh and blood.  

 

3 comments:

steve said...

That Lutherans rightly treasure the Sacrament of the Altar as a means of grace by which we receive the true body and blood of Christ orally as a sign, seal, and testament of the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation is not in dispute. John 6, when read in its entirety, is unquestionably “Lutheran” in the sense that Luther interpreted it. What is disputed about the Eucharistic reading of John 6 is that its theology draws an incorrect parallel between the necessity of communion and salvation, for “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” I would assert that no Lutheran would doubt that, though the Reformed deny and do not receive the real presence, they still through faith in Christ have life and salvation. The meaning of John 6, in which Jesus repeatedly states that “everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day,” is thus about justification by faith alone.

This distinction was not lost on the professors at Concordia Seminary, who denied Sasse a teaching position because, among other reasons, “he has a different view of the Sacrament than us.” That Sasse has undergone a renaissance in the LCMS as of late is more due to the preference for the ecumenical spirit of the age than the traditional approach of doubling down on doctrinal exclusivity. While it is true that in the Sacrament we receive the forgiveness of sins, and that this is justification, life, and salvation, this does not mean that John 6 is about the Sacrament.

Janis Williams said...

I am not the only recovering Southern.Baptist who has been fully and finally convinced by the straightforward reading that John 6 is Eucharistic. I am reminded by a friend that I am not a theologian. Yet the love of God and His Word plus the desire to know its meaning is a qualifier. Willingness to submit to ‘real’ theologians make this a safer bet, as well. I may disagree with Luther, but Faith in the substance of flesh and blood is worth the danger of acceptance of the interpretation.

gamarquart said...

Janis, you have no more, no less of the Holy Spirit than the world's best theologian. It is He who interprets Scripture for us, and makes a parishioner equal to a theologian.
Peace and Joy!
George A. Marquart