The Catholic Church teaches that at the Last Supper Jesus changed bread and wine into his body and blood with the words, “This is my body . . . this is my blood.” But many Protestants say the Eucharist was intended by Christ to be merely a symbol of his body and blood.
Which position coheres best with the scriptural evidence? Let’s take a look.
One line of defense for the Catholic position is to take literally Jesus’ words in the Bread of Life discourse in John 6. John records Jesus saying, “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.”
There are many ways we can show that Jesus did not intend his words to be taken merely as a metaphor. Here we’ll focus only on two.
First, Jesus’ audience understood him literally, and Jesus doesn’t correct them. In verse 52, Jesus’ Jewish audience responds, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Jesus’ disciples respond with similar perplexity, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” (v. 60).
You would think that if the members of Jesus’ audience were mistaken, and given the gravity of this teaching, Jesus would have clarified their taking his words literally. But Jesus does just the opposite: he affirms the literal meaning.
In response to the comments made by his Jewish audience, Jesus reiterates the need to eat his flesh and drink his blood no less than six times in six verses (vv. 53-58). He likewise affirms his disciples’ literal interpretation when he allows them walk away because of their refusal to accept his teaching (v. 66).
A further reason to take Jesus’ words literally is that first-century Jews already had a metaphorical meaning for the language “eat flesh” and “drink blood”—namely, persecution, assault, and destruction. For example, in Revelation 17:6, the harlot is “drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus,” which many scholars take to refer to the first-century persecution of Christians by Jewish religious leaders. A few verses later, in verse 17, the language of eating flesh connotes the destruction of the harlot, which given the interpretation of the previous metaphor of drinking blood symbolizes the burning of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.
It’s unlikely that Jesus would have intended his command to eat his flesh and drink his blood in order to obtain eternal life to be taken in the metaphorical sense common among Jews, since these words, understood metaphorically by Jews, would have meant, “If you destroy me, you will live forever.”
If Jesus were using this language in a different metaphorical sense, he would have made it clear that he was doing so, lest his audience think that he intended the absurd meaning above. Since Jesus doesn’t make such a clarification, we can conclude that he’s not using the language of eating his flesh and drinking his blood in a metaphorical sense.
For these two reasons, among many others, we can conclude that Jesus meant his words literally and not metaphorically.
If Jesus intended his command to eat his flesh and drink his blood to be taken literally, and the Last Supper is the event where he reveals how the apostles are to fulfill that command, then it’s reasonable to conclude that when he told the apostles the bread was his body and the wine was his blood, he meant it literally.
A second line of defense is to appeal to the typological precursor of the Last Supper. Jesus’ use of the phrase “blood of the covenant” reveals that he intends the Last Supper to be for the New Covenant what the sprinkling of blood on Mount Sinai in Exodus 24:8 was for the Old Covenant: namely, the ratifying ceremony.
But if real blood was used for the ratifying ceremony of the Old Covenant, then how much more need there be real blood for the ratifying ceremony of the New Covenant, which is the Last Supper? To not have real blood present at the Last Supper would be to make the New Covenant inferior to the Old, which isn’t correct biblical theology.
Another way to defend the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist is to appeal to St. Paul’s teaching on the Eucharist 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.”
The clue that precludes a mere symbolic understanding of the Eucharist is Paul’s usage of the phrase “guilty of blood,” which is a figure of speech connoting murder (see Numbers 35:27, Ezekiel 35:6).
One incurs the “guilt of blood” only if the victim is present in person. If someone fires a gun at a picture of the president of the United States, that person is not guilty of the president’s blood. But if someone shoots the president in person, then that person is guilty of the president’s blood.
Paul says that we’re guilty of Jesus’ blood if we unworthily partake of the Eucharist. Therefore, Paul must view the Eucharist to be Jesus present in person and not a mere symbol of Jesus.