Why do Catholics understand the Eucharist to be literally Jesus Blood and Body but yet Peter is not a rock?

Question

If we took everything in the Bible literlly, wouldn't Peter have been a rock who was actually the foundation of the church? If so, how can we ingest God's blood and body?

What sense???

Answer 1

Why starting trying to make sense of Christianity now? Logic doesn't apply there.

Answer 2

You're blaming Roman Catholics for taking the Bible too literally?? What about all those millennialists out there who seem to think that there will be a literal 1000 years & that the Israel of the New Testament is literally the state of Israel (a lie: the Israel of the N.T. is the Chruch), yet they don't accept *Christ's own words*, "This *is* my body...this *is* my blood..." (Matt. 26:26-29; Mark 14:23-24; Luke 22:19-20)? Also see John 6:25-71; 15:1-8. To deny Christ's real presence in Holy Communion is to deny Christ, period.

Granted that transubstantiation is false theology. It is not Christ's dead body & blood that we receive in Holy Communion (read Hebrews 9-10), but Christ's resurrected body & blood that we receive *supernaturally* (not merely physically, not merely spiritually because Christ's two natures, human & divine will never be separated) in, with & under the bread & the wine which is connected to God's Word & heard by the receiver. The way in which this happens is indeed a mystery (that's what the word "sacrament" means), so we accept it by faith & don't judge God's infallible & unchanging Words by man's finite & fallible standards.

To deny the real presence altogether is far more heretical than believing that it is really Christ's body & blood. Paul confirms this: 1 Cor. 10:16; 1 Cor. 11:23-29.

Read Numbers 11. Are you sure you're not "craving other food"?

Read the Gospel truth about The Sacrament of the Altar. It is the pure Gospel & shouldn't be polluted by man's fallible reason.

Answer 3

Catholics do not take everything in the BIble literally, but there are some things said that are meant literally. Such as "eat my body and drink my blood." We know Christ meant this literally for many reasons. He said it several times, he allowed some of his followers to leave upon hearing those words and did not tell them he was speaking figuratively...because he wasn't. We know the early Christians were accused of cannibalisim by some...because they were eating flesh and drinking blood during their Christian gatherings (services).

The Eucharist was instituted by Christ himself at the last supper. He had explained many times during his time with us that it was his body and blood that must be consumed...then at the last supper he took bread and said "this is my body" he took wine and said "this is my blood" and the Apostles understood what he meant. In order to accomplish his command in John 6 they would use the bread and wine as he had told them to.

We have not only sacred scripture but sacred tradition and the authority of Christ. Like a 3-legged stool all these things come together to make the Church. The stool cannot stand on only one leg...it must be all three. So in all that we know and understand, the teachings must agree with the scripture, the traditions and the magesterium together.

The Eucharist is in part what we know from scripture and what we know from tradition. Additionally, we know it was practiced by the fathers of the Church...they early Christians, so there we have the magesterium...or authority as well. All three agree that the Eucharist is the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ.

Answer 4

When Jesus called Peter a rock, He used the same word Kepha.

We can figure that Peter understood Jesus was speaking metaphorically becuase he didn't respond with "what? i'm not a rock, i'm a person silly"

but when Jesus spoke about Eucharist before the last supper, He said "My flesh is flesh indeed" and people left, which can only mean they thought He was speaking literally.

If He wasn't He would've said "you don't understand", but instead He let them leave.


there's also the fact that the Vatican is built on the tomb of Peter.


lost.eu/21618

Answer 5

Pastor Billy says: simply because Christ did not speak in metaphor when speaking on the Eucharist. When he spoke of his Real Presence in the Eucharist as described in John 6 he was extremely literal and even repeated several times "this is my REAL body and REAL blood.

The original Greek language of the text is also extremely clear the word trogon translated in Protestant bibles as eat is better understood as to gnaw or to chew.

Peter as the Rock is a metaphor as is Jesus is the cornerstone, keystone etc...

Answer 6

Why do fundamentalist insist on interpreting every part of the Bible literallly----THEN say the 6th Chapter of the Gospel of John is all figurative?

How many times does Jesus need to to say I AM the bread....using, I might add the HOLY NAME OF GOD to identify Himself in the process???

I'm sorry- how can ANYONE look at that and doubt the RealPresence of Christ in the EUcharist????

Answer 7

For 2000 years Catholics have practiced the commandment to eat His Body and drink His Blood. We understand this to be literal because of Jesus' soliloquy in John 6 at the synagogue in Capernaum and from the teaching of St. Paul in His pastoral epistles. The Catholic hermeneutical approach is to take Bible interpretation literally unless there is an indication to do otherwise. In this particular case there is no indication by the text itself that it should be believed anyway but literally and also is more than sufficient evidence of the literalness in the supporting teaching by Jesus and St. Paul. We can also see from the book of acts that the first century Church also believed in the literal words of Christ by their practice of the real presence Additionally ther is the evidence that no one believed differently withingn the Church for 2000 years which is supported by patristic evidence in the veracity of the teaching.

In all of Scriptures, Jesus never went to more effort in emphasizing the literalness of His teaching in any of His commands. He told His Church to "Do this" and we do believing it is just as He said it is on faith in Him. St. Paul said we must discern His Body, and we do. We believe what Jesus said that if we do not eat His body and drink His Blood we do not have life in us. We are thankful for His grace.

Not to believe in the literalness of Jesus' Words is to follow the doctrines of men which Jesus warned against, in particular the doctrine of Ulrich Zwingli the foremost heretic of the Reformation in protest of Christ's Church.

In Christ
Fr. Joseph

Answer 8

Catholics don't take everything in the bible literally. You're confusing us with the fundamentalists (who don't really take everything in the bible literally either, but they don't know that they don't).

We believe in the Eucharist because of our Church tradition. Catholics have to equal sources of revelation: scripture and tradition. Our tradition, the wisdom of the ages, tells us that the Eucharist is the actual body and blood of Jesus and not merely a symbol.

Answer 9

We do not take EVERYTHING in the Bible literally, if we did we would believe Methuselah lived to over 900 years old.
Peter was told by Christ "you are Peter( rock) and upon this rock I shall build my church."
At the last supper Christ said "this is my body and blood (bread and wine) do this in remembrance of me. Meaning, offer his body and blood IE bread and wine.

Answer 10

They must say that the Catholic Church is wrong or else why are they Protestants? Yet they must also admit that not one of their denominations has any right to declare itself to be the one True Church. And that, for the simple reason that Christ did not estab­lish any institution which could be known by men to be His Church.


They are all brought up with that impression and so they continue in religious matters to wander where they will, like people in a forest, who follow any line of tracks without bothering to ask where it leads. And they so love the risky adventure of experi­menting for themselves that they search Scripture for every possible text which they think will support them.


All Christians admit that Christ intended a unity of some kind to prevail amongst His followers. But we cannot deny for ourselves what type of unity must prevail. The "all going the one way" type of unity, whilst each goes his own way, is useless if it be quite foreign to the mind of Christ. Who can accept the in­vention of Protestants who, noting the numberless ways in which they are divided, define the unity re­quired to suit themselves in their present circumstances and in such a way that they may remain where they are.


Those who believed all that He had taught would at least be one in faith. Again, He demanded unity in worship. "One Lord, one faith, one baptism," was to be the rule and baptism belongs to worship. The early Christians were told distinctly by St. Paul that participation in the same Eucharistic worship probably was essential to the unity. "We, being many, are one bread, one body; all that partake of one bread".
In other words, "The one Christ is to be found in Holy Communion, and we, however numerous we may be, are one in Him if we partake of the same Holy Communion."

Protestantism cannot preserve Christian standards in­tact. Articles of faith have gone overboard. Mortifi­cation and fasting are not required. The evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience, with their consequent inspiration of monastic life are ig­nored. Protestant writings excuse, and even approve, laxity in moral practice. Protestantism has not pro­duced anything equivalent to the canonized Catholic Saint. Many of the Sacraments of Christ are not even acknowledged by Protestantism, whilst the heart has been torn out of its worship by the loss of Christ's presence in the Blessed Eucharist. Of spiritual author­ity there is scarcely a trace. The very clergy are not trained in moral law, and cannot advise the laity as they should, even were the laity willing to accept ad­vice. The prevalent notion, "Believe on Christ and be saved," tends of its very nature to lessen the sense of necessity of personal virtue.

Protestantism was a movement of heated dissent. Error and rebellion took the first Protestants from the Catholic Church, the various forms of error, or the various countries in which the rebellion occurred, giving rise to the various sects. But any goodness which the first Protestants took as doctrinal baggage with them was derived from the Church they left. And any apparent goodness in the teachings of Protestant­ism is still to be found in the Catholic Church. Where, in the Catholic Church, cockle sown by the enemy is found here and there amidst the wheat, Satan was wise enough to allow some wheat here and there to remain amidst the cockle of Protestantism. And it is the presence of this wheat which accounts for the con­tinued existence of Protestantism. But the wheat does not really belong to Protestantism. It is a relic of Catholicism growing in alien soil. A Catholic is good when he lives up to Catholic principles, refusing to depart from them. A Protestant is good when he unconsciously acts on Catholic principles, departing from those which are purely Protestant.

Answer 11

Don't they have a statue of him in Rome or something? It's probably made of rock.