As I said last week, for a few Sundays I will recover some of the debates I had with Protestants. Some of them took place not long after the Lord brought me back to the Catholic Church. And that can be seen in some of my expressions, still very influenced by the previous eight and a half years in which I was an evangelical.

Today I bring the beginning of a debate on verses 28 to 56 of chapter 6 of the gospel of Saint John. It took place in June 2000, just seven months after I returned home. Obviously there was a response from the other party, but The format of a blog prevents copying entire debates that – although not in this case – sometimes lasted for several weeks and in which other Catholics intervened who sometimes made further contributions from me unnecessary. I do not include the nickname or name of the people with whom I debated because I do not think it adds anything to the substance of the issue:

Protestant apologist: John 6:28-65 While the Romanist interpretation of the Eucharist draws heavily on John 6, in its context this passage is not directly related to it. In fact, it is notable that the Gospel of John is the only one that omits the words of institution of the Eucharist.

Luis: It is not true, as some think, that the Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Pentecostal Episcopalian… interpretation of the Eucharist is largely based only on John 6. You only have to go to 1 Corinthians 10:16 or 1 Corinthians 11:23-29 to see how the apostle Paul himself interprets the Eucharist in a very similar way to how the churches I have mentioned do.

Protestant apologist: John 6:28-29 Then they [the Jews] said to him: -What shall we do to carry out the works of God? Jesus answered and said to them: -This is the work of God: that you believe in him whom he has sent.

*Here Jesus clearly states that God is not requiring works as a condition of receiving salvation, except the “work” of believing in Jesus Christ, who was sent by the Father. This faith leads to salvation and eternal life.

Luis: To begin with, Jesus Christ is not answering a question closely related to salvation. The Jews do not ask him “what must we do to be saved?”but “what will we do to carry out the works of God?”That said, it is still interesting that the very fact of believing in Christ is considered a WORK on the part of the Lord. Furthermore, I think it is good to remember that God’s own Word says that demons believe… and tremble. That is to say, the demons also “believed” in Jesus Christ and some of them, upon being expelled, shouted announcing who He was. And no one will say that these demons are saved by such a thing. Believing in Jesus Christ NECESSARILY implies acting in accordance with said belief. I think not understanding that is not understanding the message of the gospel.

Protestant apologist:
30-31 Then they told him: -What sign, then, do You make, so that we may see and believe in You? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate manna in the desert, as it is written: He gave them bread from heaven to eat.

* In order to believe, the Jews required a sign or miracle;such as, for example, the miracle of manna that their ancestors had received in the desert. This was his first mistake. Note carefully that it was Jesus’ interlocutors who brought the topic of miraculous food into the debate. Jesus’ response must be interpreted in light of this challenge.

Luis: It is not bad to remember that the people of Israel were accustomed to God manifesting himself to them through signs and miracles in the most important moments of their history. It would also not be bad to remember that a few chapters later, in that same gospel, Jesus said this:

Jn 10,37-38
If I do not do the works of my Father, do not believe me. But if I do them, even if you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in the Father..

The Protestant says that it was a mistake for the Jews to demand a miracle or a sign. Jesus told them at a certain point that if they did not want to believe in his words, they could believe in his miracles and his signs so that in this way they would understand that the Father was in Him. And the drama of the Jews of that time was not that they asked for signs but that once they saw them, they continued without believing.

Protestant apologist:
32-33 Therefore Jesus said to them: – Truly, truly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. Because the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

* “Therefore” indicates Jesus’ reaction to the demand of his listeners. Now the Lord uses their own words to teach them with authority. He begins by stating that the descent of manna was not the work of Moses but of God himself and then establishes that the true bread that descends from heaven is not manna, but a Person sent by the Father so that the world could have life through him. The manna that sustained the wandering, hungry people of Israel and enabled their physical survival was but a shadow or type of the true heavenly food, that is, Christ, through whom we have eternal life.

Luis: I agree.

Protestant apologist:
34-36 They said to him: -Lord, always give us this bread. Jesus said to them: -I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me will never hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst. But I told you that you have seen me, and you do not believe.

* Despite Jesus’ statement, his listeners continue to think about edibles as a kind of “supermanna.”Therefore, now the Lord becomes more explicit: the Jews are not simply to wait for a better manna, but for the definitive salvation of God, which is found only in Christ.

Luis: Good.

Protestant apologist: It is not, as the doctrine of transubstantiation teaches, that the bread becomes Christ, but that He is like a bread that gives eternal life. The only way to eat this bread is to believe in Jesus, who by the Father’s disposition is Lord and Savior. Jesus is able to lead everyone who believes to eternal life.

Luis: The doctrine of transubstantiation is not based only on the fact that this part of the gospel says that Christ is the bread of eternal life. It is based on the fact that Christ, by establishing a new covenant, shows that the bread and wine of the Easter celebration are his body and blood. And it is based on Paul teaching very clearly that taking the bread and wine is having communion with the body and blood of Christ. No more, no less.

Protestant apologist:
37-40 Everything that the Father gives me will come to me;and whoever comes to Me, I will never cast him out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do My will, but the will of Him who sent me. And this is the will of Him who Sent me: that I lose nothing of all that He has given me, but that I raise it up on the last day. This is the will of my Father: that everyone who looks at the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and that I may raise him up on the last day.

* The one who descended from heaven is none other than Jesus, and therefore He is the food and drink of salvation. But as often happens in the Gospels, and particularly in this one of John, those who speak to Jesus do not understand what he is telling them.

Luis: We agree.

Protestant apologist:
41- 42 Then the Jews murmured at him because he had said: “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”And they said: -Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph? Don’t we know his father and mother? How is it that he now says: “I have come down from heaven”?

* The second thing that Jesus’ interlocutors question is the heavenly origin of the Lord. They object that they know him and his family. Jesus seemed to be one of them. How could they believe that this man had been sent directly by God?

43-47 Jesus answered and said to them: -Do not murmur among yourselves anymore. No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him;and I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the Prophets: And they will all be taught by God. So, everyone who hears and learns from the Father comes to Me. It is not that someone has seen the Father, but that he who comes from God has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you: He who believes has eternal life.

*Here Jesus reaffirms his authority in unequivocal terms. Only through Him can His listeners have eternal life. The Lord bases his teaching with a biblical quote (see Isaiah 54: 1-3). Next, Jesus takes up and elaborates on what he had told them before.

Luis: Correct.

Protestant apologist:
48-51 I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the Manna in the desert and died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that whoever eats it will not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven; If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.

*The comparison is direct. Those who, guided by Moses, ate the manna from heaven, still died. Instead, Jesus now offers nothing less than eternal life, and such lasting life can only be obtained through him. For this reason, manna was a type or prefiguration of the reality found only in Christ. For this reason he describes himself as the definitive bread, a bread that will be given for the salvation of the world, as the Apostle will later say, “dead in the flesh but made alive in the Spirit.”His listeners seem increasingly confused, for the simple reason that they are thinking that He is talking about literally eating the flesh of Jesus Christ. His mistake was precisely to ignore the parallel that Jesus drew.

Luis: No, the listeners’ problem was not that they thought that the flesh of Jesus Christ had to be literally eaten. The problem is that it was IMPOSSIBLE for them to understand at that time what that meant. The manna that fell from heaven was not ethereal. It was real. You could EAT.In Christ the manna from heaven stops being a food that serves only for the preservation of the human body, and becomes food for the health of the soul and spirit.

Protestant apologist:
52 – 59 Then the Jews argued among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”And Jesus said to them: – Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last Day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in Me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, in the same way he who eats me will also live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Not like the fathers who ate and died, he who eats this bread will live forever. These things he said in the synagogue, when he was teaching in Capernaum.

* Instead of giving them more explanations, Jesus insists on what he said: He is the bread of life. For those who long for eternal life, his flesh is the only true food and blood is the only true drink.

Luis: Amen. And certainly the flesh of Christ is true food and his blood is true drink. Now it only remains to remember that Christ himself said that the bread was his body and the wine his blood. Clearer, water.

Protestant apologist:
60 – 63 Then, upon hearing it, many of his disciples said: -This is a hard word; Who can hear it? Jesus knowing in Himself that His disciples were murmuring about this, He said to them: – Does this scandalize you? What if you saw the Son of Man ascend to where he was first? The Spirit is the one who gives life;the flesh profits nothing. The words that I have spoken to you are Spirit and they are life.

* Many of Jesus’ listeners, including some of his disciples, were offended by what they thought was scandalous teaching. Instead of softening his words, the Lord poses yet another challenge: If they found this so hard that they rejected the offer of salvation for that reason, how much harder would it be when they saw Jesus in glory and realized what they had lost because of the hardness of their hearts?

* The key to correctly understanding the words of Jesus is to be found in his statement about the value of the Spirit and the flesh, and the fact that his words are Spirit and life. The emphasis is placed on the need to believe Jesus and accept his salvation.

Luis: What is really amazing about this passage is that Christ does not say to them “boys, do not be scandalized by what I have said, since I was simply speaking allegorically and symbolically”….NO. QUITE THE OPPOSITE.He tells them that the words He had spoken to them were SPIRIT AND LIFE. And all Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans… know that the bread and wine of the Eucharist ARE NOTHING without the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on said elements. We also know that without believing in Christ, partaking of his body and blood is not only useless but also very dangerous, as Paul warns us in his epistle to the Corinthians (1 Cor 11:29). Of course the most important thing is to first believe in Christ and accept his salvation. But it is also important to BELIEVE that taking the bread and wine is having communion with the body and blood of Christ, just as Paul teaches us in 1 Cor 10:16: “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not the COMMUNION of the blood of Christ? Is not the bread we break the COMMUNION of the body of Christ?“

Certainly we Catholics answer YES AND AMEN to those two questions from Paul and we rejoice not only that we believe in Jesus Christ but that we have communion with his body and blood, which washes us from all sin.

Protestant apologist:
64-65 But there are some among you who do not believe. For from the beginning Jesus knew who those who did not believe were and who was going to betray him, and he said: -For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it has been granted to him by the Father.

* Again, the central theme of the speech is the need to believe in Jesus, an attitude of the heart of which “eating his flesh and drinking his blood” is but an image. It is seriously wrong if the image is confused with the spiritual reality it represents.

Luis: When Christ says “there are some among you who do not believe“He is not referring to any of the Jews with whom he was speaking before, but to some of his own followers. At no point does Christ say that “eat their blood and drink their blood” is an image. Rather what it says is that some of his own followers DID NOT BELIEVE in his words, did not believe in Him. But what’s more, the Protestant stays there and does not go to the next verse that says that from then on some of those who followed him abandoned him. In other words, when they heard that they had to “eat his body and drink his blood”, they decided that this must be something of meigas and they departed from Him. Certainly it takes a lot of faith to accept that we must “eat his body and drink his blood.”But Peter himself, although he surely did not then know very well the full meaning of what Christ was saying, confessed his faith in Him and in His Word.

Protestant apologist: * Roman Catholic theology uses this passage as one of its strongest evidences of its doctrine of transubstantiation, that is, that by virtue of the words of consecration of a priest, the bread and wine become, without changing their appearance, the flesh and blood (and Trent adds “soul and divinity”, without any biblical justification) of our Lord.

Luis: Catholic theology, Orthodox, Lutheran… It is good that every evangelical who reads this forum knows that the issue of the real presence of Christ in the elements of bread and wine is something that has been part of the doctrine of the Church of the first millennium and today continues to be part of the doctrine of the Lutheran and some other Protestant churches. In other words, it is not something that any Pope of Rome has invented. The dogma of transubstantiation seeks to explain the nature of this presence and how it affects the elements of bread and wine, but what is essential, as Catholic theologians recognize, is the belief in real presence. In fact, a Lutheran or Orthodox may be allowed to participate in a Catholic Eucharist in certain circumstances, while those who do not believe in such real presence are not.

Protestant apologist: With this they turn the Scripture upside down, because what the Lord was teaching was not that the Eucharistic bread and wine were going to become Him, but that He was like bread and wine that lead to eternal life, unlike manna which had no such power.

Luis: Certainly Christ was not teaching AT THAT MOMENT that the bread and wine were to become Him. He taught that LATER.What he did teach AT THAT MOMENT is the vital importance that “eating his body and drinking his blood” has for the life of a believer.

Protestant apologist: It should be emphasized emphatically that what Jesus’ listeners understood from his words is completely irrelevant, since they obviously misinterpreted his teaching:

Luis: The thing is that Christ, when explaining to his disciples what he had said, did not interpret his own words as any Protestant of the Reformed wing does.

Protestant apologist: 1. They wrongly demanded a sign like the manna of the desert.

Luis: Christ later asked the Jews to believe his signs.

Protestant apologist: 2. They wrongly rejected that Jesus came from heaven.

Luis: TRUE.

Protestant apologist: 3. They wrongly overlooked Jesus’ demand to believe in him to achieve eternal life.

Luis:
This requirement is prior to the Catholic who approaches to take communion.

Protestant apologist: 4. They misunderstood Jesus’ description of himself as the definitive bread of God, mistakenly thinking it referred to an act of cannibalism.

Luis: They could not understand the ultimate meaning of “eating his body and drinking his blood.”Saint Paul did understand it. Catholics, Orthodox…We also understand it (some better, others worse)

Protestant apologist: In short, many rejected Jesus because they could not understand what he was telling them. This glaring incomprehension can never be an adequate basis for Christian doctrine. Many also did not understand him when he said that he was the Vine, the Door, that his body was the Temple, etc.

Luis: I wonder if something similar to what happened to those Jews doesn’t happen to many today: THEY STILL DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT CHRIST WAS SAYING.Thank goodness that the vast majority of Christians who do not understand that do not abandon Christ as some of his first followers did. They prefer to interpret this and other passages in a way that does not make them feel too violent when faced with the reality of “eating the body and drinking the blood” of Christ.

Protestant apologist: The text under consideration does not refer directly to the Eucharist, whose institution, as I previously noted, is omitted from the Gospel of John. The context is not eucharistic, but soteriological. It is about who Jesus is and what God offers us through him. The image of true food and drink was presented in response to the demand of Jesus’ listeners for a miracle like that of ancient manna. While Roman theology teaches that the bread becomes Jesus, our beloved Lord taught that he was a bread of life. And there is a big difference between both conceptions.

Luis: “Roman” theology – and Orthodox and Lutheran – TEACHES that he who participates worthily in the Eucharist has communion with the Body and Blood of Christ, as the Bible teaches in 1 Cor 10:16.“Roman” and other theologies teach that he who “eats his body and drinks his blood” has eternal life, while he who does not do so has no life. Roman theology is biblical and orthodox.

Author: Luis Fernando Pérez Bustamante