James White is an anti-Catholic Christian Fundamentalist who preaches to other anti-Catholic Christian Fundamentalists through his organization, Alpha & Omega Ministries. White spent two hours on his YouTube channel attempting to explain in a video titled “John 6 for Roman Catholics” how and why the Bread of Life Discourse in John 6 has nothing to do with the Eucharist as the actual body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ.
As you know, Catholics believe that once the priest consecrates the bread and the wine at Mass, the Eucharist is truly Jesus Christ in the flesh and in the spirit. We point to various passages in the Bible to show where Christ himself tells us that it is his body, blood, soul, and divinity. The Bread of Life Discourse is one of these passages.
White spent nearly two hours trying to assail the true meaning of John 6. He had two primary arguments that are closely related. I’ll lay out his primary arguments and provide the clear teaching of the Church that responds to both.
Not either/or but both/and
First, White says that John 6 is purely spiritual. He says that we are not saved by eating bread or drinking wine but only by coming to Christ and believing, which are purely spiritual actions. White says that Catholics ignore the earlier passages of John 6 that speak to the spirituality of John 6. He says we switch the meaning to a purely physical interpretation as John 6 moves into the Bread of Life Discourse.
The clearest way to respond to White’s argument is to point out that as Catholics, we see the spiritual and the physical aspects of John 6. It is foolish to try and look at this chapter as an either/or. It is both, intended as both and properly understood as both. When we receive the Eucharist, we receive the physical Eucharist.
The priest’s words of institution (the consecration in the eucharistic prayer) have the spiritual effect of retaining the appearance while God performs the miracle of transubstantiation. In reality, we are not eating bread and drinking wine as White claims; we are consuming the true body and blood of Jesus Christ, just as Christ taught at the Last Supper, just as St. Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 10 and 11 and as all Christians believed and practiced from apostolic times and as Catholics believe and practice today.
Why they walked
White then considers the most compelling fact in John 6, related in verse 66, when Christ’s own disciples reject him and walk away from him, refusing to believe in him any longer. As Catholics, we point to this very verse and say, “See? Even Christ’s own disciples understood Christ literally when he said his followers must each his flesh and drink his blood to have eternal life. That’s what Catholics still do today at Mass. But you non-Catholics don’t even believe Jesus and, like the disciples in John 6:66, you walk away unbelieving.”
But White claims that the disciples walked away because of all Jesus was saying, not because of the eating of his flesh and drinking of his blood. According to White, Christ’s command to eat his flesh and drink his blood had nothing to do with the disciples’ rejection of him. White lists the teachings that ran off all these followers of Christ:
- Jesus is the Son of God and therefore divine
- The centrality of Christ
- Only those given to Jesus by the Father can come to Jesus
For White’s position to be reasonable, this would have to be the only place in the Bible where Christ taught these things. But Christ had consistently and frequently taught everything we see in John 6 except the eating of his flesh and drinking of his blood. White makes no mention of Christ’s command to eat his flesh and drink his blood as a reason for the rejection of Christ, yet this is the only new teaching of Christ in John 6.
There are two unique facts in John 6. It is the first mention of the need to consume Christ’s flesh and blood, and it is the only time we see followers of Christ say a teaching is too hard to accept and walking away. There are other times when non-believers walk away from him, but here they are his actual followers. There must be a reason for this, and a reason that since apostolic times the Church Fathers pointed to the eating of Christ’s flesh and the drinking of Christ’s blood as the reason the disciples called the teaching too hard and walked away.
Let’s see if White’s reasons hold up to Scripture.
1. Christ’s disciples walked away because Jesus claims he is the Son of God and therefore divine.
White is wrong. Christ taught this very fact throughout the four Gospels. A few of many examples are Matthew 7:21 and 9:6-8; John 3:16, 3:34, 4:34, 5:17-23, 5:37, 7:28-29, 8:24, 8:58, 10:30-33, 14:6-11, and 20:21-28. On all these occasions, Jesus’ audience recognized that Jesus was claiming to be God or at least divine, but no disciples claimed the teaching was too hard and walked away.
2. Christ’s disciples walked away because Jesus was teaching about his centrality.
Another swing and a miss by White. First, we must consider what White means when he uses the word centrality. Christian Fundamentalists use this word to assert that Christ is the one mediator between God and man and that Christ’s work on the cross is the one and only means of our salvation. It is best summarized by Christ’s claim that he is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). As you can see, non-Catholic Christians are using a phrase of their own to teach the same thing the Catholic Church has taught for 2,000 years.
Now that we understand what White means by Christ’s “centrality,” let’s see if John 6 is the only place this teaching appears in the Gospels. Again we find gaping holes in White’s theory on John 6. Christ teaches his centrality in many verses, including but not limited to Matthew 6:24, 11:27, 18:6; Luke 6:46, 10:22; John 5:22, 7:37-39, 9:5, 10:11, and 12:32. No disciples grumbled or turned away from him in any of these passages.
3. Christ’s disciples rejected him because he taught that only those given to Jesus by the Father can come to Jesus.
Let’s break this one into two subcategories to explain how White is wrong again. First, let’s look at the “giving of the Father” then at White’s claim that man cannot “come to Jesus” on his own.
The giving of the Father
White spends a lot of time pointing out that Christ taught “the giving of the Father” in John 6. This is the non-Catholic belief that some people have no chance of entering heaven because some will not be called to Christ by God the Father. In White’s theology, some people are not “given to Christ by the Father”; therefore, they are apparently created to go to hell. This is contradicted by other Bible verses such as 2 Peter 3:9.
The “giving of the Father” is used to support the unbiblical teaching of “once saved always saved,” because John 6 and other passages in John can lead non-Catholics to the mistake that once they are “given by the Father” they cannot lose their salvation. This is because of their manipulation of Christ’s words when he says, “I shall lose not one” and “I certainly will not cast out.” As we will see, these words have nothing to do with assurance of salvation or “once saved always saved.”
But White wasn’t arguing “once saved always saved” on this occasion, so he focused on these words as meaning that God will give some people—but not everyone—to Christ. How’s that for an image of a merciful and loving God? To hammer this teaching home, White claims that Catholics believe that God “makes salvation available and then sits back and sees if anyone will take him up on his offer.”
By characterizing Catholicism’s understanding of salvation in this way, White makes God out to be uncaring and cold, like the gods of ancient Greece. But we know this is a mischaracterization of Catholic theology so that White can then attack the mischaracterization and appear truthful.
But Christ talks about the “giving of the Father” in other passages, and no disciples object and leave him. Examples are John 10:27-29, John 17, and, most importantly, John 18:8-9, where the evangelist records exactly what Christ was talking about in John chapters 6, 17 and 10:
“Jesus answered, ‘I told you that I am he; so if you seek me, let these go their way,’ to fulfill the word which he spoke, ‘Of those whom you have given me I lost not one.’”
Not only did no disciples leave Christ in chapters 10, 17, or 18, John himself tells us that White and others are wrong when they try to use the “giving of the Father” in John 6 as basis for “once saved always saved” and as a basis for the teaching that some people will not be given to Jesus by the Father. The context and the plain reading of the entire Gospel of John shows that Jesus was speaking specifically about the apostles, not Christians in general.
Come to Jesus
The flip side of the “giving of the Father” is White’s theory that man has no ability to “come to Jesus” on his own. This issue has a delicate distinction between Catholic and non-Catholic theology. Unless we really get into the deeper meaning of White’s understanding, a Catholic can look at this teaching and easily agree. After all, the Catechism of the Catholic Church points out that the Church has always taught that the saving grace of baptism is a total gift that cannot be merited by man. In other words, without the gift of salvation from God, there is no salvation (CCC 2027).
However, White really means that man has no free will to choose between God and sin. In White’s world, the Father gives you to Jesus or you will never be saved, because you have no ability to choose. The Church teaches that we retain our free will even after the initial grace of conversion and our justification; therefore, we do have the ability to “come to Jesus” again and again throughout our lives.
We receive the initial grace of conversion and justification in our baptism. But even after baptism we retain the freedom to choose between good and evil. The ability to “come to Jesus” is not only merciful and loving, it is necessary.
But back to White’s argument against the eucharistic nature of John 6. White says that Christ’s disciples rejected Christ not because he was telling them that in order to be saved they must eat his actual flesh and drink his actual blood but because of other reasons, one being his teaching that they must “come to” him. But like the other things White lists, the other times Jesus taught that we must come to him no disciples walked away. As a matter of fact, this teaching is so fundamental and so frequent in the Gospels, I’m not going to use up space listing the verses.
The physicality of the Eucharist
White wants to ignore the physical aspects of John 6 so he can focus solely on the spiritual. He wants us to wear blinders to the full Gospel. He wants to ignore the rest of Scripture as well as the constant teaching of the Catholic Church from the apostolic age through today.
Catholics note clear eucharistic teaching and belief the Last Supper accounts, where Christ gives us the words that Catholic priests use to consecrate the body and blood at every Mass. We also see St. Paul’s clear eucharistic belief and teachings in 1 Corinthians 10:16: “Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ?”
Paul comes back to the Eucharist in 1 Corinthians 11:23-29: “Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord.” As you can see, Paul took John 6 literally (both the physical and spiritual aspects). And Paul tells us John 6 is not simply spiritual, symbolic, or figurative. For St. Paul, the body and blood of John 6 is the very same as the body and blood of the Eucharist.
White goes on to say that the Church Fathers did not teach that the Eucharist was truly the body and blood of Jesus. First, he falsely claims that the Church says “all the Church Fathers” taught transubstantiation or the Real Presence. That isn’t true. While most Church Fathers did believe that the Eucharist was truly the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ, some didn’t.
The thing to remember about the Church Fathers is that some were heretical at times, some fell away from the Church, and none of them were infallible. The Church Fathers are simply a great resource for showing what early Christians did, said, and believed.
Instead of walking through the Fathers’ teaching on the Eucharist, White picks out some quotes from St. Augustine to support his understanding. Granted, he was doing this as part of a video, so he had to limit his time, but he didn’t give his sources for the quotes, and he didn’t provide any context. Additionally, he ignored obvious writings of St. Augustine that make it clear Augustine believed in transubstantiation. Here’s just one:
That bread which you see on the altar, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the body of Christ. That chalice, or rather, what is in that chalice, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the blood of Christ. Through that bread and wine the Lord Christ willed to commend his body and blood, which he poured out for us unto the forgiveness of sins (Sermons 227).
Although Augustine didn’t teach these things until the early fifth century, many Catholics taught what would come to be identified as transubstantiation long before that. In his Letter to the Romans 7, in A.D.110, St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote:
I desire the bread of God, the heavenly bread, the bread of life, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became afterward of the seed of David and Abraham; and I desire the drink of God, namely his blood, which is incorruptible love and eternal life.
In about A.D. 151 St. Justin Martyr wrote in his First Apology:
For not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the eucharistic prayer set down by him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nourished, is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus.
The Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325) taught that the Eucharist was properly called the body of Christ.
The same things were taught by St. Irenaeus of Lyons, St. Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, St. Hippolytus, Origen, St. Cyprian, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, and St. Ambrose, which takes us through the first five centuries of Christianity.
White overlooks this. He concludes with a catch-all historical objection to transubstantiation: “if in the early Church there was a belief in transubstantiation, then isn’t it interesting that all the stories about eucharistic miracles start after A.D. 1000 and that all the teachings about how to handle and treat the Eucharist do as well?” He says the Eucharist was not reserved in the tabernacle after Mass and that there are no references to monstrances, pixes, and cyboriums in the early Church because these beliefs come from a later time.
In article at catholicculture.org, Fr. Francis J. Schaefer confirms through his research that the Eucharist was protected, revered, and preserved outside the Mass as early as the third century and that the reservation of the Eucharist in the tabernacle began with reservation in something called a “tower” in the fourth and century. The “tower” was replaced by the tabernacle in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
I hope you can see that White has failed in his challenge of the longstanding Catholic interpretation of the Bread of Life Discourse in John 6. He has misinterpreted John 6, ignored relevant portions of other books of the Bible, overlooked significant teachings of the early Church Fathers, and missed substantial evidence in Church history.