The Christian Vanguard

My Anglican friend believes in open communion, that is that in virtue of him being a Christian, he should be allowed to partake in the Eucharistic sacrifice of the Mass. He has a great appreciation for the Church Fathers, and so I wonder what he will make of some of the following quotations (and I do intend to ask). St. Ignatius of Antioch views the Eucharist as a sacrament of Ecclesial Unity.  St. Ignatius in Letter to the Philadelphians 4  says,  Take care, therefore, to participate in one Eucharist (for there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup that leads to unity through his blood; there is one altar, just as there is one bishop , together with the council of presbyters and the deacons, my fellow servants), in order that whatever you do, you do in accordance with God.   In his letter  Letter to the Smyrnaeans 8 , he writes, Only the Eucharist which is under the authority of the bishop (or whomever he himself designates) is to be co...

I've noticed in some of the forums I frequent, one of the recurring issues between Catholics and Orthodox is whether it is legitimate to take only the bread/body of Christ and not the cup/blood. Catholics, though we do both during our liturgy, don't always do so. Orthodoxy, from what I understand, do both through intinction. I had a protestant friend come to Mass once and concluded that we were more liberal on the issue. No such thing is true.  There are plenty of places in scripture that discuss only the body in reference to the Eucharist, such as John 6:31-35, 48-51, 57-58, Acts 2:42, and others. The reason is that since you take his body or blood, you receive the fullness of His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. This is brought out in more explicit terms in 1 Corinthians 11:27 " 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. " Paul makes two uses of logical opera...

Talked about the Eucharist and John 6 in class. Here are the videos.

Just about all Protestants believe that the Eucharist is just a symbol, meaning, it has no real or literal significance. A flag may symbolize a country, but it is not the country itself. In the same way, Protestants believe that the Eucharist is a symbol of Christ's body, but is not Christ's body itself. It is not the real body of Christ, or it is not the literal body of Christ. If this is what Protestants want to claim, then they can have absolutely no support from the Church Fathers, nor could they in principle. The reason is because this view of the Eucharist is anachronistic, that is to say, it assumes a metaphysical view of symbols, namely nominalism, that didn't exist at the time and wasn't commonplace until the 16th and 17th century.  The Church Fathers tended to be Platonists, which is a kind of realism. Nominalism is an anti-realism. Platonism is not only a kind of realism, but on the more extreme part of the realism spectrum, which is why Platonism is som...

When faced with passages like John 6 in regards to the Real Presence of the Eucharist, many Protestants I know will say something like, "Yeah, but Jesus obviously spoke in parables and metaphors. So this has to be another." This begs the question, but more fundamentally, it isn't an answer.  True, Jesus has spoken before in parables, analogies, metaphors, and all the rest. But how does it follow from Jesus it doing it before that he is actually doing it here? To make that leap, you would have to infer that everything Jesus says is not literal. But obviously that's absurd, because Jesus does refer to things literally, including his resurrection. The inverse can also show how this really isn't an answer. Suppose I said, "Well, Jesus obviously spoke literally and particularly elsewhere. So this is another example." That wouldn't work. 

Chapter five begins differently than the other chapters. Whereas the other chapters has a paragraph or two slowly working into Catholic doctrine, this chapter begins with a bang, with no introductory remarks whatsoever. It goes straight into Confirmation. And so to Confirmation we go. (This is 13 pages, so, brace yourselves)