Catholic apologist Joe Heschmeyer joins Cy Kellett to tackle the common objection that Jesus’ words about eating His body and drinking His blood are merely symbolic. Joe clarifies how understanding the context of Jesus’ language reveals that He often speaks both literally and metaphorically, emphasizing the importance of discerning His intent in Scripture. Dive into this insightful discussion to deepen your understanding of the Eucharist!
Transcript:
Cy: The most obvious objection, it seems to me, is that this is all just symbolic. Jesus says, “I am the vine, you are the branches.” Do you eat vines and say, “That’s Jesus’ body”? Jesus says, “I’m the sheep gate.” Every time you see a sheep gate, do you go, “Oh, that’s really Jesus’ body”? So am I making this objection clearly enough?
Joe: I usually just hear it with like, “Oh, Jesus says, you know, I’m the door.” Does he actually have like a hinge and a handle? And he’s made of wood?
And look, let’s give the objection the weight that it deserves. Because this is just another way of saying sometimes Jesus speaks metaphorically. So how do we know he’s not speaking metaphorically here? Yeah, because once you say it that way, it’s like, well, it’s not that strong of an objection. The fact that sometimes Jesus speaks metaphorically is no reason to believe that he always speaks metaphorically. Sometimes Jesus speaks literally. That doesn’t mean he always speaks literally.
Cy: And so he’s using actual human communication. So his incarnation means that he speaks like a human being. Sometimes he’s metaphorical, sometimes he’s literal.
Joe: Exactly. And so when you’re reading the Bible, there’s no special gold star because you say, “I’m a biblical literalist.” Because if you just say, “I’m going to interpret this literally,” it depends on what we mean by literally. The historic sense was according to the letter, which meant you’re interpreting it the way the authority seems to mean it to be read. But the way we use literally now means non-metaphorically.
And so if you’re interpreting the Bible non-metaphorically when it’s using metaphor or using allegory or using hyperbole, you know, if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off, that’s hyperbole. Don’t go mutilate yourself, those kinds of things. Like, you should not interpret it by prejudging that you’re going to take everything non-metaphorically. So that’s the weight that it deserves, right? We agree on that.
And you know, we don’t say everything in the Bible should be read non-metaphorically. A good way of interpreting this is by looking at the biblical context. A bad way of interpreting it would be to say, “Well, if John 6 is literal, that’s a hard teaching, therefore I reject it.” Because we know from John 6 itself that it’s a hard teaching, but I’m getting a little ahead of myself.
Cy: Well, Jesus says other hard things like, “Be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” I think I may be paraphrasing that, but basically, “Be perfect” is an impossibly hard teaching. So is Jesus being figurative when he says that?
Joe: No, because you can’t decide, “I’m going to accept some level of sin in my life.” Like, if you’re not aiming for perfection, then you’re not aiming high enough for holiness.
Cy: So just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s not literal. Exactly. That’s a great point.
Joe: A good way to tell is by looking at things like the context: how did his original listeners understand him? And then do we have any indications whether they understood him correctly or incorrectly?
And you’re going to get two types of indications. Frequently, Jesus will correct them if they misunderstand him. That’s a good way of knowing what he means. The other category is that sometimes the evangelist will correct a misunderstanding.
So I’ll give you a few examples. In John 2, Jesus says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I’ll rebuild it.” And John tells us that he was speaking of the temple of his body. Now, John wants to make it clear Jesus’ body is not just metaphorically a temple. I mean, his body literally is a temple because a temple is a divine dwelling place and a place of divine sacrifice. He meets in his body all of the definitions of what a temple is, but our imagination, when we hear the word “temple,” runs through the building in Jerusalem.
And so Jesus truly, he’s not just speaking metaphorically there, but he’s also not speaking of the temple in Jerusalem. He’s speaking of the temple of his body.
Cy: May I say something there?
Jimmy: Yeah, you may.
Cy: The mind runs because Jesus is using the temple as a metaphor for his own body. He’s doing that on purpose. So, for example, when Jesus says, “I am the bread of life,” he’s not saying that so we won’t think of bread. He’s saying that so we will think of bread.
And one particular type of bread too, the manna, which is the bread come down from heaven, which was called the bread of angels in the Psalms, which is this miraculous bread. So he wants to draw your mind to miraculous bread as a way of understanding what he is saying in the Eucharist.
Joe: Right, right. So to say that he’s speaking metaphorically is not to say that he’s not also speaking literally in a certain way. Do you see what I’m saying?
Cy: I do.
Joe: And in fact, what we’re going to see in John 6 is that there is one layer of metaphor.
So the problem with a Protestant interpretation—and I’m speaking very broadly there, not all Protestants believe the same thing about the Eucharist—but if you think that we’ll get into this in just a second, we want to watch out for a double metaphoric interpretation where you say his language is a metaphor for a metaphor for some vague spiritual principle. That’s going to be a bad interpretation of Jesus. The fact that he sometimes uses metaphor is not bad.
So I gave you John 2. In John 3, Jesus talks about being born anew or born from above and born again. This is where that comes from. And Nicodemus thinks that this means physical birth. And Jesus has to explain that he’s using this non-literal kind of language to describe spiritual rebirth.
So we see in John 3 Jesus correcting Nicodemus directly when he misunderstands. In John 2, Jesus doesn’t correct them directly. And this is actually going to be very important because this will be one of the allegations raised against him at his trial. But John explains so we won’t misunderstand.
I want to contrast that with John 6, because if John 6 is just another metaphor like we saw in John 2 or 3, where, you know, “bread of life” just means something like, “My teachings are really good, you should really chew on what I’m telling you,” something like that, then, okay, we would expect it to read like that.
But I would encourage as a good bit of biblical exegesis to just go carefully through the back and forth and just look at what Jesus says and then look at how the crowds understood him. And then whether Jesus seems to affirm or redirect or refute that understanding. Because those are how you figure out the interpretation.
Like if Nicodemus says, “I have to be born again physically,” and Jesus said, “Absolutely,” that would totally change how we understood John 3. Right? So you want to look at the interaction, not just what does Jesus say, but how does Jesus respond to people saying some version of, “Do you mean X?”
Cy: Yeah
Joe: Because you see a lot of that in John 6. Most of the chapter in John 6 is dedicated to this Eucharistic teaching. And so you have Jesus saying that he’s going to give them this bread, this heavenly bread, and they’ve just received the multiplication of the loaves the day before. So their first thought is that this is just going to be food because they’ve just received miraculous bread.
Joe: And so they’re just imagining that they want this always. Jesus then corrects them that this isn’t what he means. He’s not going to give them the same thing he gave them the day before. He says, “I am the bread of life which came down from heaven.” It’s John 6:41.
And so they murmur at this saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”
Now notice what they’ve done when he says that the bread is him who’s come down from heaven. They now think, “Okay, so the bread is just a figure of speech for Jesus.” And all he’s trying to tell us is that he came from heaven.
So that’s what bothers them because we know where he’s from.
And notably, a lot of the Protestant exegesis on John 6 ends up somewhere like that. That when Jesus talks about the bread, it’s just his teaching or it’s just a reference to him being from heaven.
And if that was right, the chapter could just end there, like, “Okay, this is what he said.” And then people were confused because they knew where he was born. But Jesus corrects this understanding and explains that this is not true.
And he then compares this to the manna. And then in verse 51, he says, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.” And then he says, “And the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
Cy: So he’s just explained what the metaphor means. He could have said, “The bread which I will give for the life of the world is my life-saving teaching.” He could have said, “The bread which I will give for the life of the world is the substitutionary atonement on the cross.” He says, “It is my flesh.”
Joe: And so is he using a metaphor of bread in one way? Yes, he’s using the manna, but it’s a metaphor for his body. And so when he says, “You have to eat this bread,” he doesn’t mean you have to really ponder his teachings. He’s just told you bread here means flesh.
Cy: So eat this bread means eat my flesh.
Joe: And so it is a metaphor, but what’s it a metaphor for exactly? It’s a metaphor for his physical flesh.
Exactly. Yeah. So is it, you know, bodily? Is it metaphorical? Yes, in a way that is satisfied by the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist pretty uniquely.
Because at that point, they have a new objection. Their objection now is, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” But notice this is now John 6:52. Like the Eucharistic teaching really begins on verse 22, so we’re 30 verses deep.
Cy: They don’t, you know, the other times where Jesus speaks symbolically and people take him literally, it’s usually right away. They just hear a figure of speech. They don’t understand it’s a figure of speech. And so their minds run to the wrong place. Their minds didn’t do that here.
Joe: Jesus slowly, carefully, methodically kind of leads them into, yeah, there is a way this is a figure of speech because it’s not literally bread, it’s literally my flesh.
Cy: Right? So he’s working them towards what the person who does not believe in the real presence in the Eucharist would say is the wrong conclusion.
Joe: Like, he’s not working them towards the right conclusion; he’s working them towards the wrong conclusion, if that’s what you think.
Like, if you take a sort of a non-sacramental read of John 6, Jesus seems to be steering in exactly the wrong direction because he’s leading them deeper and deeper into that understanding of his teaching. They didn’t start there. Jesus slowly led them there.
And then in verse 52, as I said, they say, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So now we’re at a juncture. If that is a wrong conclusion, one that Jesus seems to have led them into, Jesus would seemingly have a basic duty as a teacher, to say nothing of a moral duty.
Like if someone says, “Oh, I’m supposed to literally cut off my hand to follow you,” you should say, “No, this is a figure of speech. Let me explain what a figure of speech is.”
Cy: Yeah, right.
Joe: And so here, if they’re saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” We know now the kind of interpretation they’re taking. We don’t know exactly, but we have enough of a sense of what they have in mind.
And Jesus responds by doubling and tripling and quadrupling down. In fact, let’s just go through this, if we may, and just count the number of times he seems to redouble this direction, the sacramental view.
Cy: He says to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man.”
Joe: Well, the verbiage here has actually shifted. In Greek, it went from the normal word for “to eat” to “trogon,” which means, like, to gnaw. It’s more of an animalistic eating. So he’s already doubling down just on the imagery.
He’s not just saying “eat,” but like “chew,” “gnaw my flesh” and “drink my blood,” or actually say “his blood” because he says, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood.”
Now, drinking of blood, even of an animal, is strictly forbidden. So now if this is a figure of speech, what kind of figure of speech is it to say we have to drink the blood of Christ?
To say, “I’m going to drink Cy’s blood” does not mean to any normal person, “I’m going to listen to what Cy has to tell me.”
Cy: Yeah, that’s really weird.
Joe: Yeah, right. As a metaphor, it doesn’t make sense. If you just mean something like ponder his teaching or take them to heart or follow Jesus, those are not normal expressions, you know.
Cy: Well, could you though? Because sometimes Jesus’ metaphors, and I think the bread one that you said, it’s rooted in Jewish teaching. So like when he’s saying about the bread come down from heaven, he is—that’s a weird metaphor. But he’s drawing on an already well-established, thousand-year-old historical item that they know about.
Joe: In a way, yes. But notably, there’s no Jewish precedent for the drinking of blood. Again, like under the Mosaic law, the drinking of the blood of an animal was strictly forbidden.
Cy: But Leviticus explains that the reason it’s forbidden is because the life of the thing is in the animal and so in the blood.
Joe: Sorry, in the blood. Yes. So to drink the blood of an animal would be to enter into communion with it in a way that was unseemly. For you to like become communing in the life of a cow would be completely inappropriate.
Cy: Yeah, right.
Joe: So you weren’t allowed to have any animal blood in your food at all because it was a sign of basically communion.
And so if you have that Jewish understanding, then when Jesus is saying, “Drink my blood,” on the one hand, the drinking of blood is strictly forbidden. On the other hand, if you understand why it was strictly forbidden, then you can see why the very reasons you wouldn’t drink the blood of an animal would be the reasons you would want to drink the blood of God.
Cy: Yeah, because if you drink the blood of the cow, you’re taking on the life of the cow into your own life. That’s weird. That’s a thing lower than you. You’re debasing yourself.
Jimmy: Right. It’s bestial.
Cy: But if you take on the life of the Lord,
Jimmy: “No longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” would be the kind of thing you could say if you have been transformed by the body and blood of Christ.