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Joe weighs in on the latest back and forth between William Lane Craig and Gavin Ortlund. In this episode, Joe tests Dr. Craig’s biblical arguments against the real presence of the Eucharist.
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer, and I think that two of the Protestants doing the most interesting things online right now are Dr. William Lane Craig and Dr. Gavin Orlund. So I’ve been very interested in their recent sort of sparring over the doctrine of the Eucharist. The biggest area of contention is Gavin’s claim that Baptists actually believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
CLIP:
Lots of people are surprised to discover that as a Baptist, oh, as a Baptist, you really believe in real presence. Yes, actually real presence is the historic Baptist view. Nobody knows this. It’s amazing.
Now, as for his claim that Baptists have always believed in the real presence. I’m very skeptical of that. I just finished an excellent book by Baptist theologians, Thomas Shriner and Matthew Crawford entitled The Lord’s Supper published in 2010. And if Gavin is right, these Baptist theologians don’t know their own tradition because they clearly do not believe that in the Eucharist we eat the physical body and drink the physical blood of
Joe:
Jesus. I’m not a Baptist and I’m not going to weigh in on that particular debate. I’m much more interested in the question of what scripture teaches. And to that end, the two sides have helpfully focused on three biblical passages on the Eucharist that I don’t think get enough love. And hey, if you’d like to show us some love, visit shameless joe.com and you can become a patron for as little as $5 a month. We don’t take sponsors on this channel, so your direct support helps keep the ministry going. You’ll also have access to exclusive q and a live streams and a community of wonderful Christians who help build one another up in the faith. So thank you to everybody who already is a patron, and if you’re not, please feel free to check out shameless joe.com and become one today. Okay, there are three passages as I said that they focused on beginning with one Corinthians chapter 10.
In talking about the Eucharist, it’s important to establish at the outset that we’re really looking at really three major dimensions, presence, sacrifice, and communion. That is Jesus is really present in the Eucharist. The Eucharist is a sharing in the sacrifice of Christ, and the Eucharist is a participation in Christ or a communion with Christ. And St. Paul’s teaching in one Corinthians 10 actually touches on all three aspects of the Eucharist in some interesting ways. So let’s start with sacrifice. Now, Gavin argues that there’s some sense in which Protestants should affirm that the Eucharist is a sacrifice. But William Lynn Craig strongly disagrees with this.
CLIP:
When Gavin says, in the Protestant tradition, we speak of it as a sacrifice. I couldn’t believe my ears. This is shocking. The idea that the Eucharist is a represenation of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross to God is a Catholic doctrine that was vehemently opposed by the Protestant reformers. There was no aspect of the Catholic mass that they rejected more vigorously than the idea that the mass was a sacrifice presented to God. And therefore, I think it is all together unfitting to regard the Eucharist as a sacrifice that we offer to God.
Joe:
Now, once again, my interest isn’t really in whether Craig or Orland is doing a better job of faithfully representing the historic Protestant view or views on the sacrifice of the mass. I don’t really have much of a dog in that fight. My interest isn’t what the scriptures say on this. And one Corinthians 10 is rather clear, perhaps the clearest passage teaching that the Eucharist is in fact a sacrifice. But the passage only makes sense if you first understand sacrifice as the Israelites did. Now, I actually spoke about this recently using the example of a Jewish child at the Passover. So we hear sacrifice and we think of just the killing of an animal or the death of Christ, but that’s not it. That’s not accurate. You kill the Passover lamb on preparation day on the 14th day of the month of Nassan, but that’s not enough.
Maybe it sounds bad. It’s not like there’s anything wrong with the blood of the lamb there, but that’s not the end of it. So the example I’d give is let’s say, let’s say you’re a kid in a family. You’re of the age of reason. Let’s say you’re a 13-year-old kid and your family is poor and does not own the Passover lamb under Jewish law, you could share the Passover with another family. If you couldn’t afford your own lamb, how are you covered by the death of the lamb? Well, you didn’t raise the lamb. You don’t own the lamb, you’re not slaughtering the lamb well, the answer is very explicit. The blood is smeared on the doorpost and then you eat the lamb. Maybe you don’t even smear the blood on the doorpost, but you participate in the sacrifice. You become a partaker by eating. And look, Exodus 12 is pretty clear about describing the whole right from the slaughtering of the lamb to the smearing of its blood, to the eating of its flesh as the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover.
These are not three separate sacrifices. These are different dimensions to the same sacrifice. And you know what? Pagan sacrifices worked the exact same way. So when St. Paul wants to explain how it is that our communion in the Eucharist works, he explicitly says that it’s like how those who eat the sacrifices in the temple of Jerusalem become partners in the altar. St. Paul has already established that Christ our Paschal lamb has been sacrificed. And how is it that we share in the sacrifice? Well, in the same way that an Old Testament Israelite would share in the sacrifice of the Paschal Lamb by eating its flesh. Now, that seems to pretty clearly imply that in the Eucharist we’re eating the flesh of Christ, but it’s even clearer that the Eucharist is a sacrifice because well, it’s the eating of a sacrifice. And if that all isn’t clear enough, St.
Paul then compares the Eucharistic sacrifice to pagan sacrifices, drawing this fascinating parallel between the table of demons on the one hand and the table of the Lord on the other. Now remember, the table of the Lord is how God refers to the sacrificial altar in Jerusalem in Malachi chapter one. And here, St. Paul’s using this very same term to describe the altar at which the Christian Eucharist is offered and the cup of the Lord, he compares to the cup of demons in which pagans would consume sacrificial libations offered to demons. So I don’t see a way to read all of this sacrificial theology in one Corinthians 10 and come away believing that the Eucharist isn’t a sacrifice or that the Christian table of the Lord isn’t an altar like the Jewish table of the Lord or like the pagan table of demons. Paul’s whole argument seems to presuppose that you can just immediately recognize the sacrificial theology. And Craig actually doesn’t really address that angle at all other than to sort of say it somehow Unfitting. Instead, he suggests that St. Paul here is showing us that the Eucharist is really just a symbol.
CLIP:
And the fact that this is not meant literally is I think decisively shown by Paul’s analogies that he draws to the participation of Israel in the altar and pagans in demon worship. It is not that these persons are eating demons or eating the altar, rather they are participating in Jewish or pagan worship services. And Paul is saying, I don’t want you to be involved in demon worship. So his analogies to Israel and the altar and pagan worship and demons not being partners, not having koinonia with these things only makes sense on the, I think symbolic interpretation, not the real presence.
Joe:
On the one hand, I think Craig’s argument’s actually pretty clever here. I think his point is this, in the Jewish sacrificial offerings, they’re entering into communion with God, but they’re not eating God. They’re eating an animal sacrifice. Similarly, the pagans aren’t eating demons, they’re communion with demons by eating sacrificial offerings. All of that’s true, but they’re not eating symbols either. They’re eating actual sacrifices. The eating of the sacrifice is what creates communion. So it’s true. On the one hand, Jesus could have established some other sacrifice whereby we entered into communion with him, maybe the blood of bowls or goats. But the New Testament is quite clear that he didn’t, and this is where Christianity is actually unlike Judaism or Paganism Christ is both the priest and the victim. He’s the one being offered. He’s also the one with whom we enter into communion. And so as Hebrews nine explains, the blood of bowls and goats from the old covenant have now been replaced by the one perfect sacrifice, the blood of Christ.
So follow Paul’s line of argumentation, the Jewish and pagan worshipers didn’t eat a symbol of the sacrifices. They ate the actual sacrifices. This is how they shared in the sacrifices, even though they might not have been the ones who personally raised or killed or offered the animal, Jewish worshipers ate the Jewish sacrifices. Pagan worshipers ate the pagan sacrifices. And as Paul’s logic seems to suggest, Christian worshipers eat the Christian sacrifice. So the only question that remains is what is the Christian sacrifice? And Paul has already told us our Passover lamb is Jesus Christ himself. So we can see St. Paul pointing us towards Christ’s presence and his sacrifice in the Eucharist. But what about the dimension of communion as Gavin Orland explains,
CLIP:
Then you get to passages like one Corinthians 10 16, the cup of blessing that we bless. Is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break? Is it not a participation in the body of Christ? A participation in Christ is not the same thing as a commemoration or remembrance of Christ. The word participation is the word. Nia sometimes translated fellowship as in Acts 2 42 or second Corinthians six 14. What fellowship has light with darkness? This word fellowship really gets at the intimacy with Christ that is to be enjoyed in participation in the Eucharist.
Joe:
But Craig seems to respond to this by treating our communion as a lateral communion with one another rather than a communion with and Christ.
CLIP:
Now what about this word participation coin? Nia means association or partnership and it emphasizes the lateral dimension among the people. It’s like participation in a race. You participate with others with the intention of running a race, and it’s very similar with the Lord’s supper. The emphasis is on the koinonia among the participants in the Lord’s supper and participating equally in taking the elements of the bread and the wine that symbolize the body and blood of Christ.
Joe:
Well look, let’s start with where we all seem to agree. Koinonia is the New Testament term that’s often used to describe communion and thus fellowship. So does St. Paul simply mean that the Lord’s supper is a gathering together like maybe a parish potluck supper that draws us all together or is he saying something deeper? Well, the first thing to note is that Paul tells us that our communion isn’t just with one another. It’s not just a lateral communion, it’s a communion with Christ or perhaps put better. It’s a communion in the eucharistic body of Christ. In 16, he describes the Eucharist as a participation in the body and blood of Christ. And that word participation there is koinonia. But it’s also true that by being united to Christ in the Eucharist, I also therefore become united to my neighbor. And so Paul explains in the very next verse that the church is the body of Christ because we all partake of the one loaf, the eucharistic body of Christ. So you can’t understand this theology of eucharistic communion by making it simply lateral and about us because this would be cutting Christ out of his communion. The only way that I can become your brother is by becoming your brother in Christ. And this happens first and foremost in baptism and then in holy communion. So let’s turn then to one Corinthians 11, very next chapter. The passage that Gavin wants to focus on here is one that I think is really underappreciated. I wish this would get mentioned more. So listen to how he presents it.
CLIP:
Then you find fascinating little details like people in the church in Corinth dying for partaking of the Lord’s Supper unworthily. Now you could account for that maybe on a memorial list model that denies real presence, but at least raises the question of is there something more going on here?
Joe:
I think he’s making a great argument here, and I wish more Catholics would make this argument. St. Paul treats the unworthy reception of the Eucharist as a deadly error. Now in context, he seems to be talking about spiritual sickness and death. In other words, receiving the Eucharist unworthy is damnable. Now maybe you think he just means you’re physically going to die if you receive the Eucharist, unworthily will leave that debate aside. But either way, I think it’s hard to explain either of those readings if you think the Eucharist is just a symbol. Now, let’s say I tell you that I think Aslan is a beautiful symbol of Jesus Christ in the Chronicles of Narnia, and you tell me you don’t really care for that book series or maybe you just don’t really see that connection. If I’m being completely vulnerable here, when I first read the book as a kid, I somehow missed that Aslan represented Jesus.
But fine, imagine in this situation that you’re in that same boat and I now imagine that I respond to you by telling you that you can die and go to hell. Wouldn’t you find that a bit of an overreaction? I mean, after all, Aslan is just a symbol. It’s not like you’re actually rejecting Christ. You’re just rejecting a symbol of Christ you don’t happen to resonate with. And similarly, if the Eucharist is just a symbol for Christ, even a symbol for Christ given to us by Christ, why would it matter a great deal if we don’t happen to find it helpful or useful? After all, Jesus gives plenty of teachings, plenty of images and parables, and I think if we’re being honest, some of them don’t hit home with us. We don’t happen to find them relatable or helpful. They don’t really encourage us in the same way other ones do, and we’re not told that we’re not receiving those parables.
Worthily, that whole language Paul has here seems very different. So it’s hard to see why unworthy reception of the Eucharist and particularly failing to discern Christ in the Eucharist would be a deadly error if it’s all just a symbol. On the other hand, if the Eucharist is Jesus, then of course the passage makes sense. When Za reaches out and the ark, he struck dead. Well, how much worse if we irreverently stroll into the holy of Holies not recognizing the presence of God, or we just waltz up to the throne of God without acknowledging him? Now, Craig rejects that whole line of argumentation though because he claims that one Corinthians 11 doesn’t actually talk about discerning the body of Christ.
CLIP:
With respect to the passage in one Corinthians where God’s judgment was coming upon some of the Corinthians, they were sick and Ill some had died. God was judging the people in Corinth for taking the Lord’s supper unworthily because of those social divisions. Those class distinctions that I met mentioned rather than sharing equitably in the elements of the meal, it had nothing to do with their failing to discern the real presence of Christ.
Joe:
I wonder if Craig might not just be misremembering one Corinthians here, because while it’s true that earlier in the chapter St. Paul had to cried, those who were getting drunk while others are going hungry, he doesn’t ever describe that as a deadly error. And more importantly, that whole conversation is back away. It’s back in verses 20 to 22. It’s before Paul even introduces the institution of the Eucharist. After he describes the institution of the Eucharist down in verses 27 to 29, that’s when he starts to talk about this sin of what he calls profaning, the body and blood of the Lord. And he says that anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, Easton drinks judgment upon himself. So he just says this all directly. That’s the irreverence that St. Paul describes as deadly. I don’t see a way to read that verse and claim that St. Paul doesn’t talk about discerning the body and instead he’s talking about social divisions. And that leads us to the third passage at the end of the podcast, Dr. William Lane, Craig’s co-host Kevin, him about John chapter six. Now, that’s a passage that I’ve talked about before, but there’s two particular angles that Craig raises which I think are worth mentioning, beginning with what it means to drink the blood of Christ. After all, Jesus doesn’t just teach that we need to eat his flesh. He also says quite explicitly that we must drink his blood.
CLIP:
It were deeply offensive to Jews to consume blood that’s prohibited in Leviticus and in the Old Testament that you cannot drink or consume the blood of the sacrifices that were offered in the tabernacle and the temple. This was anathema, and so it’s no wonder that they were offended.
Joe:
There’s two important questions to ask here. First, why couldn’t the Jews consume animal blood? After all, it wasn’t just that they couldn’t drink the blood of sacrificial animals, they couldn’t drink the blood of any animals, and God actually answers this question in Leviticus 17. He says, this is because the life of every creature is the blood of it. In other words, to drink the blood of an animal would be bestial because you’d be communing in the life of an animal. You would be uniting yourself in the life, a bowl or a goat. That whole thing is subhuman and unholy. But Leviticus 17 explicitly applies only to creatures. It does not apply to God himself. If God were to become man, say, and to have a human body, then to drink his blood would be to share in the life of God. Not only is there no law against that, that in fact sounds very much like the call in Christianity to participate in the life of Christ, to participate in the blood of Christ.
The second question I want to ask about the blood of Christ is okay if this is all assembled, this is all a metaphor. Just what is it a metaphor for? I can understand how you might hear eating the flesh of Christ and think it’s a metaphor for listening to Jesus’s teaching or something chew on this. But it’s entirely unclear to me how someone could hear drinking the blood of Christ and think, oh, you must mean listening to his teaching. The only time to my knowledge that the Bible describes drinking of blood as a metaphor is when it’s talking about murdering people. For instance, in Revelation 17, we’re told that the who of Babylon was drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. Now clearly you can tell from that image itself that it’s not trying to say she’s doing a Bible study with the saints or listening carefully to their teaching. No, she’s murdering them. So it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense for someone to say Drinking the blood of Jesus is a metaphor, unless they’re saying that Jesus is teaching, we need to try to murder him. In contrast, it seems to make perfect sense to say that we enter into communion with Jesus by drinking His blood in communion. That very much makes sense in the Jewish framework of the role of blood. Nevertheless, Craig is going to claim that there’s actually nothing in John six that would suggest we should take Jesus literally,
CLIP:
Even if the language that John uses would have occasioned in the mind of his readers thoughts of the Eucharist. It’s not a Eucharistic context, and John says nothing to suggest that he meant this in a literal way.
Joe:
I’m not going to do a deep dive on John six just because I’ve covered it before, but I’m struck by the extreme nature of Craig’s claim here. Because there are plenty of places is true in which Jesus speaks in a metaphor and his audience either understands it’s metaphorical or maybe they take him literally at first and he explains that it’s all spiritual imagery. But in John six, by obvious contrast, when Jesus calls himself the bread of life, the crowds actually initially just think he means something like he’s from heaven. Jesus is the one who then responds by saying, if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh. In other words, it’s true. There is a sense in which his language of the bread of life is metaphorical, but according to Jesus, that’s a metaphor not for listening to his teaching.
It’s a metaphor for eating his flesh. And it’s only at that point that the audience is eventually led into realizing he might actually mean something more literally about eating his flesh. Somehow Jesus then responds to that, not by saying it’s all a misunderstanding. Instead, it’s at this very point that he then begins to talk for the first time about the need to also drink his blood. And then he starts to say that his flesh is food indeed and his blood is drink indeed. So I don’t know how one could read that and say that there’s absolutely nothing to suggest that Jesus might mean this. Literally. Craig doesn’t do a deep dive on John six. He instead focuses just on one verse. In
CLIP:
Fact, in John 6 64, after these people say, this is a hard saying, and they leave Jesus, the disciples say they’ve left you Lord. And Jesus says to them, the flesh prophets nothing. It is the spirit that gives life. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. So Jesus is not talking there about literal consumption of his physical body and blood.
Joe:
But look, Jesus is not saying that his fleshes of no avail, remember he’s just called his flesh the living bread, which he’s going to give for the life of the world, his fleshes of great avail. He’s saying that our fleshly understanding of his heavenly teaching is of no avail. We must be led by the Holy Spirit. The spirit verse flesh distinction here doesn’t mean body verse soul like agnostic might think or literal verse metaphorical as Craig seems to think it means our natural understanding verse, a supernatural understanding that’s led by the spirit of God in much the same way that St. Paul uses this kind of distinction in one Corinthians 15 when he says that the body is sown a physical body, but that it’s resurrected a spiritual body. Now, Craig himself does a fantastic job of explaining that particular misunderstanding and how we should properly understand the body spirit kind of language. In one Corinthians 15,
CLIP:
Similarly, pneumos describes not the substance of the resurrection body, but its orientation. It is spiritual in the sense that it is under the domain of the Holy Spirit of God. So this is a sense of spiritual that you use when you say, for example, that the pastor is a spiritual man, you don’t mean that the pastor is an invisible intangible, immaterial unextended man, rather you mean that he is oriented toward and dominated by the spirit of God. And in that sense he is spiritual. And this is what Paul means in calling the resurrection body a spiritual body in contrast to a soulish natural body.
Joe:
Well, I would say similarly, Jesus in John 6 63 isn’t suddenly reversing himself. He’s not declaring that his body is an invisible, intangible, immaterial body symbol or anything like that. He’s saying that you’re only going to understand his eucharistic teaching with the proper orientation of the Holy Spirit. So I don’t think Craig’s biblical arguments for his view on the Eucharist really hold up to scrutiny now at this point where US Catholics would normally bring up the church fathers to support our Eucharistic theology. Right. Well, William Lynn Craig actually beat us to the punch. He’s got an entire part two in which he argues that the church fathers actually largely thought the Eucharist was just assembled, that they rejected the real presence, and that whole line of argumentation is pretty extreme, and it was very intriguing to me. So if you want to check out my responses to part two, you can click here unless it isn’t released yet, and then that is going to take you to a different video on the early Christians and the Eucharist. Either way, for Shameless Popery, I’m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.