A Letter from a Not Featherweight Sparring Partner David Elliot Originally published in Issue IX of Vulgata, December, 2002.

Dave Elliot's Issue V article, Christ in the Eucharist, found its way into the hands of a well-known American Protestant pro-life activist  who wrote him a rebuttal (no, really, we're not kidding).  What follows is Dave's (highly abridged) reply.  We have been asked to not print the correspondence from Dave's Protestant counterpart, out of his desire not to alienate the Catholic wing of the pro-life movement.  For the original, unabridged text of the letter, click here.

I must say from the outset that it is an honour and a joy to be considered a not featherweight sparring partner, and though I can think of hundreds of others far worthier of your steel, "Oft shall help come from the weak when the eyes of the great are elsewhere".  When I read your paper I itched for my pen out of a delighted desire to respond.

I found your response to be kindly worded, well-knit, and magnanimous in spirit, but after much prayer and study, it has only left me more certain that the Eucharist, the mystery which made the saints sing in a voice of fire, whose rumour whispers through all the leaves of Scripture, is indeed what the Church has always said it is: the Real Presence of Christ in our midst.  As to particulars regarding your paper, here are my two cents:

Is "I am the living bread" a reference to the Eucharist?

I have gone over the first segment of your argument several times now but still fail to grasp how it is not at loggerheads with the basic Biblical principles to which both Catholic and Protestant scholars give assent.  The argument given is based on chronology, and states that in John 6, where Jesus says that we must eat His flesh and drink His blood, the passage "clearly … did not and cannot … have the Eucharist in mind".  And why, pray?  Because "the episode in John 6 happened before the institution of the Eucharist recorded in the other gospels.  Therefore, none of the original hearers would have understood Jesus to be referencing the Eucharist."  Cannot is a very strong term, one to which both mainline Catholic and Protestant scholarship, the Church Fathers themselves, and your own colleague Greg Koukl would all disagree.  Did not is milder, but why does John 6 not (as the ancient, medieval, and modern Church all maintain) not only "reference the Eucharist", but proclaim it boldly, all guns blazing and all flags flying?  The reason given is that "Christ equated his body and blood with the Eucharist at the Last Supper - long after the events of John 6", but my question is this: what would Christ have to have said to make it clear that He was equating His body and blood with the Eucharist in John 6? Would "I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh" (Jn 6:51) be sufficient?  And yet Christ has already said this.  Here Christ says that He is bread, that it gives supernatural life, and that the same bread is His flesh to be eaten.  Likewise, at the Last Supper He gives the apostles bread, says it is His body, and distributes it to them all to be eaten.  And notice that Christ does not then backpedal on the imagery.  Instead He belabours the same theme, saying: "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you … For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink … This is the bread which came down from heaven" (v. 53,55,58).  Here He affirms that this bread is His flesh and that it is to be consumed along with the blood; just as, at the Last Supper, the bread is called His body and is to be received along with the blood. The two passages are perfectly fitted, literarily, theologically, and philologically.  The additional fact that of the 365 days of the Jewish Calendar, both John 6 and the Last Supper take place during the same feast of Passover where a lamb, bread, and wine were all consumed, also smells to me like a divine conspiracy.  So how then, unless you assume a priori that the Eucharist could not be His flesh and blood (but this would be begging the question), can these two passages be seen as at odds with each other? I am beginning to fear that you would have required Our Lord to have taken out a knife and begun right then and there to carve out portions of His flesh in order to get us all to agree that He was speaking of the Eucharist in this passage.

But, you say, "the episode in John 6 happened before the institution of the Eucharist recorded in the other gospels.  Therefore, none of the original hearers would have understood Jesus to be referencing the Eucharist".  And here is where I am really at a loss.  Are we to understand, then, that reference to an event or doctrine in the Gospel cannot precede its actualization?  That the camel's nose can't enter the tent before its hump, that the mustard seed can't be planted before the birds nest in its branches?  For this is what the argument implies.  But if John 6 can't be pointing to the Eucharist because it was only institutionalized at the Last Supper, then we are in a lot more trouble than either of us banked on.  Why?  Simply because Our Lord habitually taught in this manner.

Consider the Christ’s conversation with Nicodemus where Our Lord states that He must be "lifted up" as "Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness" (Jn 3:14).  Here we have a clear reference to the Crucifixion, but there is no indication that Nicodemus understands it at the time.  So does that mean that Christ can't be speaking of the Crucifixion?  Of course not.  And it is likewise with John 6 and the Last Supper.  Our Lord also said to "Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up" (Jn 2:19), speaking of His Resurrection, but everyone thinks He's talking about maybe firebombing the place.  Only in retrospect is this teaching made clear.  And yet all admit that the verse, though misunderstood at the time, did indeed point forward to the Resurrection.  John the Baptist spoke of Christ as a "Lamb", pointing to His sacrificial mission.  And yet the disciples do not understand this mission at first.  Peter even gets called "Satan" in an attempt to deny it.  And what of the sign of Jonah?  Or Christ's subtle comparison to Solomon?  In all of these passages Christ meets with incomprehension, but the meanings are plainly admitted in retrospect.  In fact, the above examples are all far more abstruse and (seemingly) unlikely than the connection between John 6 and the Last Supper.  Perhaps the most glaring of all is Genesis 3:15: the prophecy of the Woman whose "seed" will crush the head of the serpent.  For thousands of years it lay buried in incomprehension.  It was only at Calvary, when Christ crushed the head of sin and death, that this was laid bear, giving birth to faith in millions.

Does "eat my flesh" mean "believe in me?

Regarding the second part of your paper, "The passage seen in context", according to Protestant apologist Eric Svendson, "Jesus uses the analogy of bread … because that was what the crowd was interested in at that moment".  The picture painted is that Christ uses the relevant metaphor of eating and drinking to which His hearers will respond in order to drive home the fact that He must be eaten or drunk, that is, come to and believed in (as "personal Lord and Saviour" I presume?).  Thus in John 4 He speaks of "living water" to a thirsty woman, in John 6 He speaks of "living bread" to hungry men.  But on this interpretation the imagery of bread and water or what-not would be (in the Aristotelian sense) "accidental".  Christ would use as a symbol of Himself whatever item from the crockery or beverage at hand the crowds happened to be hankering for, but the symbol itself would be relative and nonessential. And yet upon closer inspection, this argument of Svendson's that "Jesus uses the analogy of bread only because that was what the crowd was interested in" disproves the very claim he is trying to make.  Why?  Simply because Christ, after having achieved at least some success with the bread imagery (where the crowds say "Lord, give us this bread always" [Jn 6:34]), then switches the symbol to that which, most spectacularly, the crowds do not want.  There is a sudden change on the menu.  The "bread" they are to eat is no longer of whole wheat or unleavened persuasion.  Christ now identifies it with His own flesh and blood.  This is … what?  Astonishing?  Macabre?  Cannibalistic?  Mumbo-jumbo?  Mystical?  Divine?  It has been regarded as all of these at one time or another, and indeed, one hardly knows how to react.  To be told by someone to dine on their blood and guts and tissue and fat would drop jaws and peel eyelids in any culture or time, but to a first-century Jew, it was beyond all reckoning.  It was madness, taboo, death.   Mosaic Law solemnly forbade it, and punished any breaches with a fist of iron.  So my question is this: if (as Svendson states) "Jesus uses the analogy of bread only because that was what the crowd was interested in at that moment", then why doesn't He stick with bread?  Why does He add "flesh" and (even worse) "blood"?  The crowd is most certainly not interested in that.  In fact, the very thought of it creates such a frightful fuss in them, that the countless devotees who yesterday wanted to make Jesus King, now leave Him forever, even though this implies that they will lose eternal life.  And yet we are to believe that Christ was merely appealing to what they were "interested" in?  No, I am afraid not.  Clearly Christ had a more viable reason for all that flesh and blood talk, especially given that the only time the phrase "eat my flesh, drink my blood" was used in Jewish culture was as a formula of vengeance to be achieved by slander, backbiting, and bloodshed (see, for example: Micah 3:3, Ps 27:2, Is 9:18-20).  So let us not paint the phrase in an unduly rosy light.

What about the Apostles' reaction?

But perhaps the heart of the matter is much simpler than we have allowed.  Perhaps the obvious has wriggled out of our hands, like a slippery fish.  I mean of course that to scotch-tape onto the text of "Eat my flesh" the interpretation "Believe in me" when the passage itself is delivered not merely to the address of Everyman, but to believers, to very the apostles themselves, is to cut off the same branch on which one is sitting.  You are arguing here that  “flesh” refers to the need for men to come to and believe in Christ.  For Our Lord to be rebuffed by the flint of heart, then, though grievous, would not astound us.  But what are we to say when Christ's very disciples, the men who eat with Him at table, walk with Him in faith by day, curl near the fire with Him at night, heal the afflicted in His name, and look to Him as the hope of the world, refuse the invitation to believe in Him?  Does this not seem a trifle absurd; that those who by definition believe in Him would be aghast at the notion of believing in Him?  That the very soldiers keeping the faith would rebel when told of the need for faith?  We have lost our sense of proportion here.  For if, as you say, Christ simply meant by the flesh and blood that He is to be believed in, then why would those who do believe in Him call it a "hard saying", refuse to "listen" to it, and thereupon cease to believe in Him (Jn 6:66)?  The whole thing doesn’t make any sense.  If a King requested that his people enlist in the military, it would be no surprise if the stay-at-home citizenry chaffed at the summons, but surely his own militia would not snort and bridle over it.  They have enlisted already.  And it is the same with Christ's disciples.  And yet, they do leave.  Who will read us this riddle?  Mr. Koukl brings the following possible solution to the table: "Some did not believe and left.  Why?  Because they were not given to Jesus by the Father (v. 66).  Metaphoric statements for belief are meant to polarize the people and separate the sheep from the goats, just like parables."  The problem with such exegesis is that at no time was the flesh and blood interpreted by the disciples  as a metaphor for belief.  No savvy Biblicist or old Galilean seadog poked the man beside him and let out the secret: "Say, you hear all that stuff about flesh and blood.  What He really means is belief".  Instead the crowds grumble: "How can this man give us his flesh and blood to eat?" (v. 52).  Their interpretation is quite biological.  And not only the crowds, but (more importantly) the disciples encore the incredulity: "This is a hard saying" they mutter, right after Christ tells them that His flesh is true food and His blood true drink.  "Who can listen to it?" (v. 60).  But here we have a quandary.  Given that Christ consistently explained the hidden meaning of parables openly to His disciples (see Mt 13:36, Mk 4:34, Lk 8:9-10, Jn 11:11-14, 16:28-30), why would He not do so here, especially with things coming to such a pinch and eternal life weighing in the balances?  Any silence at this juncture would be fatal.  And I for one cannot really believe that our Lord would let His disciples depart for "Hades' damned lake" just because they were bad poets who had been hoodwinked by a metaphor.  All the evidence points to the contrary.  But even supposing that the disciples' apostasy, despite their role as believers, was due to the fact that they were asked to become believers: then why would they wait until John 6 to make a shipwreck of their faith?  After all, by this point John the Baptist and Jesus Himself have already spoken many times of the need to believe in the Son in order to receive eternal life (see Jn 3:18, 3:36, 5:38-40).  Why such tardy apostates then?  They had plenty of chances to make like a rabblement of lemmings before, so why have they been hugging the cliffs, clinging to faith in Christ? But following the disciples' apostasy, Christ turns to the Twelve (His last faithful bastion) and asks them, plaintively no doubt: "Will you also go away?"  Peter approaches the mic: "Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God" (v. 67-69). Your refrain has been that "eat my flesh, drink my blood" simply refer to the need for belief in Christ.  In fact we see here that whatever this mysterious teaching on eating the flesh and drinking the blood means, the apostles, though naturally disinclined to accept it, do so on Christ's authority, precisely because they believe in Him.  So not only do they not take "eat my flesh" to mean "Believe in me", they accept eating the flesh and drinking the blood because they already believe in Him.

The Eucharist in St. Paul

But what does the Pauline quill have to say about all of this?  What does St. Paul, the little ugly Jew of Tarsus “taken captive by God” teach about this theme?  As he wrote no Summa, we only have "patches of Godlight" here and there in the thicket of his letters to work with.  Perhaps most revealing are his instructions to the sheik and half-Gnostic Corinthians, to whom he wrote: "Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed" (1 Cor 5:7).  His conclusion is not "Therefore let us heave a sigh of relief and wipe the sweat from our foreheads!"  No.  "Therefore let us keep the feast" (5:8).  Gums, teeth, and stomachs are still in order, as there is no feast without a meal.  And this should not surprise us.  After all, the Passover lamb of the Old Covenant had to be sacrificed, its blood shed, and then it had to be eaten (Ex 12:7).  Steps A and B were incomplete without step C.  The sacrifice was indeed salvific, but the lamb had to be eaten to restore full covenant communion.  Balk at it and the grim reaper could yet have his way with you.  (Indeed, in Egypt those who did not also eat the sacrificed lamb woke up with their eldest brother dead.)  Paul likewise sees the Passover lamb of the New Covenant as not only being a sacrifice and shedding of blood, but also as a partaking in Christ's own body: "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation (koinonia, lit. "communion") in the blood of Christ?  The bread which we break, is it not a participation (koinonia) in the body of Christ?" (10:16).  Cosmopolitan Corinth was to get a very different meal from the idol-fodder of Aphrodite.  It is this belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist which prompted Paul to say that "Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord … anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks damnation unto himself." (11:27, 29).  The passage is extremely telling, as the phrase "guilty of the body and blood" was a Hebrew circumlocution for "murder".  It was nothing less than the mark of Cain.  But if the Eucharist is only a symbol of Christ, then it would be nonsense to speak of abusing it as "murder".  If I hold up a picture of my enemy and shred it with a pen-knife, I may be guilty of madness, but not of murder.  And it is the same thing with the Eucharist.  That Paul is not merely being hyperbolic is clear from the fact that abuse of the Eucharist leads to "damnation" (v. 29), which is why (he tells the no doubt shuddering Corinthians) "many of you are weak and ill, and some have died" (v. 30).  I am afraid that with Paul, the Lord's supper was anything but a polite munching of Wonder Bread and Welch's grape juice at the local Baptist church.  For him it was nothing less than the mystical Passover at the heart of Christian life - or death - itself.  And I think that, though we tremble, we must agree.

The Eucharist in St. Augustine

Forgive me now for sounding like an ecclesiastical dinosaur or Lives of the Saints fanatic, but I must say that of all the eye-openers I came across in the stuff you sent me, it was the marshalling of St. Augustine to the horn and banner of Protestantism that really left me winded.  In that section you write: "Just as physical bread sustains physical life by physically eating it, so Jesus is the heavenly bread that sustains spiritual life by spiritually "eating" him (i.e., believing in him).  Physical food was no more in view here than physical life.  Augustine himself noted this when commenting on this passage: "If the sentence is one of command, either forbidding a crime or vice, or enjoining an act of prudence or benevolence, it is not figurative.  If, however, it seems to enjoin a crime or vice, or to forbid an act of prudence or benevolence, it is figurative.  "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man," says Christ, "an drink His blood, ye have no life in you."  This seems to enjoin a crime or a vice; it is therefore a figure, enjoining that we should share in the sufferings of our Lord, and that we should retain a sweet and profitable memory of the fact that His flesh was wounded and crucified for us."  Your conclusion?  "Augustine's view of John 6 is identical to the Evangelical view.  To interpret is otherwise destroys the physical/spiritual contrast, reducing a life-giving, personal relationship to the mere consumption of food."  Astonishing!  The erstwhile Catholic bishop really a staunch Calvinist after all.  Hippo for Geneva, it seems.  We have lost our best man.  But before swimming back over the Tiber, let's take a closer look at what is being said here.

The primary problem with the Augustine citation is that it is a very lone wolf.  It is always dangerous to cherry pick with the writings of a Father and turn this or that favoured passage into a creed without reference to the rest of his teachings.  That Augustine's theology of the Eucharist is filled to the brim with - well - blood, is only too well known.  But the line that supposedly executes a jiu-jitsu throw on Catholic doctrine comes from the pen of Augustine himself: "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man," says Christ, "and drink His blood, ye have no life in you."  The whole problem with chalking this up as a symbolist passage is that the word "figure" for Augustine meant something very different than what it means for us.  The Oxford Dictionary defines "a figure" as being something "metaphorical, not literal", but for Augustine and his teacher Ambrose, the terms figura (figure), sacrasigna  (sacred sign), and sacramentum (sacrament) were often used interchangeably to denote the visible signs of sacred realities, actions, and gestures.  Thus Augustine wrote that: "Figures which pertain to divine things are called sacraments",  and "They are called sacraments because in them one thing is seen, another is understood.  That which is seen has a bodily appearance.  That which is understood has spiritual fruit".  That is the point of Augustine here.  We receive the body of Christ in a sacramental, not in an animalistic manner.  And to this, the "Faith of our Fathers", I hold.

But let us come to brass tacks.  To hold that St. Augustine taught a purely symbolic view of the Eucharist in this passage one would have to make a kind of theological schizophrenic of him.  I say this because in his corpus we find not merely one or two or ten, but nearly two dozen passages in which he pens a fullblooded theology of the Eucharist.  Thus to the newly baptized he says: "I promised you who have been baptized, a sermon in which I would explain the sacrament of the Lord's Table … 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".

And again: "He took earth from earth, because flesh is from the earth, and he took Flesh of the flesh of Mary.  He walked on earth in that same Flesh, and gave that same Flesh to us to be eaten for our salvation.  Moreover no one eats that Flesh unless he has first adored it … and we sin by not adoring."  Here one might well ask: "if it is a sin to not adore that which must first be adored before it is eaten, then what on Earth must it be to refuse to eat the food that must be adored?"
Apart from this, to believe that Augustine held a purely symbolic view of the Eucharist, we would be obliged to hold that he came to theological fisticuffs with his revered father in the faith, St. Ambrose, the man who converted him and, holding to a realist teaching, wrote: "Although we see the appearance of bread and wine we should believe that, after the consecration, there is nothing other than the flesh of Christ and his blood."   And: "It is clear that the Virgin conceived beyond the order of nature.  And this (the Eucharist) that we effect is the Body that comes from the Virgin … indeed, it is the true Flesh of Christ that was crucified and buried: therefore truly this is the Sacrament of that Flesh.”

Like a kidney transplant that refuses to take, Protestant teaching cannot succeed in grafting itself onto that of the early Church.  Augustine will not budge.  Ambrose will give no quarter.  And the whole holy phalanx of the City of God that went before them shouts rather than speaks the same reality of Christ's Body and Blood.  That Mr. Svendson and his colleagues still do not concede this is extremely revealing. If you have ever been in a tête-a-tête with someone whose attitude quickly made it clear (whether by shifting eyes or snap reply) that they did not really want to know your thoughts on a matter but merely wanted you to parrot their own opinions (you know, "Let me tell you what you think"), then I think you will know how St. Augustine and the Fathers would feel being told that they didn't really believe in the Eucharist.  One quick dip into the Church Fathers will show that Saints Ignatius, Irenaeus, John Chrysostom, Athanasius, Augustine, Jerome and the others all shook their wise grey locks at any who refused to "discern the body of the Lord" in the Eucharist.

Is Christ literally a door, plant, or chicken?

Elsewhere you state that "Another example of this kind of metaphor (using food or drink as a symbol for belief) is found in John 4, where Jesus meets the woman at the well … In both cases a metaphor of consumption is used to illustrate belief in Jesus.  In both cases the audience mistakenly take the metaphor literally."  I was surprised that you didn't trot out the whole rigmarole about Christ calling Himself a door (Jn 10:7,9), a vine (Jn 15:1), and a hen (Lk 13:34); ergo, for the Catholic to be consistent in believing Christ's "flesh" to be literal, he must also believe that Christ is transubstantiated into doors, plants, and chickens!  But the logic behind the above argument (which Mr. Koukl so eloquently makes), and your own appeal to John 4, is largely the same. What it fails to take into account, though, is that golden thread without which the pearls of Scripture are scattered: context.  Christ speaks of Himself as a Door because He is the entranceway to eternal life.  But at the Last Supper He does not hold up a doorknob and say: "This is my body".  He spoke of Himself as a vine because we are one body in Him and we receive His grace as spiritual sap.  But not once did He hold up a vine, proclaiming "This is my blood of the New Covenant".  Yet He did just that with the bread and the wine which He foretold in John 6 would become His Body and Blood.  There He states (as if to preempt this very objection and settle all doubt) "My flesh is true food, my blood is true drink".  But never do we hear the radically preposterous "My flesh is true wood, my blood is true chicken".  To believe that Christ is literally a door, a vine, or a hen, would be like believing (in the words of C.S. Lewis) "that when Christ told us to be like doves, He meant that we were to lay eggs".  But the language of John 6 on Christ's Body and Blood is light years removed.  There one gets the impression that while the crowds considered the theme to be a dead horse, Christ insisted on beating it so hard that it came back to life again.

But the whole business you raise about the "living water" of John 4 is a little different.  There you suggest that it is used "to illustrate belief in Jesus".  But in fact we see that far from being a simple metaphor for belief in Christ, "living water" is used to symbolize the Holy Spirit welling up from within those who already believe. You ask: "why does the Catholic Church not teach that we must drink physical water to gain eternal life per John 4?"  Simply because the "water" alludes to the Holy Spirit Who is by definition immaterial and therefore cannot be literally drunk.  The "flesh" of John 6, however, alludes to the body of Christ which is by definition quite physical (unless we are to believe the Incarnation a hoax) and therefore can be literally consumed.  But note once again how Christ uses the animal verb for "eat" in John 6 to clarify this.  We are to "gnaw" or "chew" His flesh.  Whatever this is then (and the Jews thought it madness), it is not the language of metaphor.  By contrast, Jesus does not use the animal verb for "drink" in John 4.  He does not say that we are to "slurp up" or "slobber" the waters of eternal life.  In fact, in the same verse (4:14) He clarifies by stating that they will well up from within.

Is the Eucharist a Re-Sacrifice of Christ?

But your last argument is perhaps your most appealing.  In it, even the most "Romish" of us can hear something like the cuckoo's voice or the siren's song - a call to an eternity long longed for, of "ethereal seas, horizons infinite".  It is the elementary proposition (into which the seraphim long to look) that one drop of Christ's blood has more power in it than a billion bursting suns.  It is the faith that when Christ hung under the murderous heat of the Israeli Sun during that first and best of Good Fridays; that the act was sufficient, even superabundant (like David's "cup running over") to atone for the sin of the race, make peace between God and man, and open up Heaven to the saints.  Most important of all, it need not be repeated like the sacrifices of the Old Covenant.  God's dying could have atoned for a thousand Universes all asphyxiated with sin.  There is to be no talk, then, of Christ's work needing something "added" to it, or any madness about "re-sacrificing" Him.  What He did, He did (as the writer of Hebrews put it) ephapax, "once for all".

So shalt thou feed on death that feeds on men,
And death once dead, there's no more dying then.

And to this the Christian soul cries O altitudo!  The belief flows like red lava through our veins.  What puzzles me, though, is the objection to the Eucharist that you pin upon it.  I am told that "the Eucharist/mass does not square with the clear teaching of Scripture that Christ "once for all" offered up a sacrifice for sin."  Christ's sacrifice "cannot be repeated, nor can it be continued" you say.  And to all of this I would wholeheartedly agree if we were merely speaking of an event in time.  The Eucharist is not about "dragging Christ" out of Heaven to be nailed in pain to Catholic altars.  Nonsense.  The Mass, rather, takes us up into the heavenly worship of the Apocalypse where the self-giving of Christ is eternally present before the Father (Rev 5:6).  Jesus is the "Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world" (Rev 13:8) because the Divine Word offers Himself up to the Father not solely on Calvary, but in the very life of the Trinity from before the fiat lux.  Beyond time, beyond imagination, beyond what mortal tongue can tell, the Father eternally begets the Son in a life-giving act of divine love and the Son eternally surrenders back begotten deity in loving obedience.  That is why we can call God "Love".  If the "love" were only given to His creatures, then God would not be love, for He would not have loved before He created.  It is because the Father eternally gives that divine life which the Son eternally offers up again, that God is in Himself an eternal dance of love to which the outer sacrifice of Calvary is (dare I say "only"?) the temporal (and hallowed) crystallization.  Indeed, one might go so far as to say that just as Christ said "Before Abraham was, I AM", in the interplay of eternal Self-giving in the Trinity and its temporal realization on the Cross, we very nearly hear: "Before Calvary was, I DIE".  This is not to minimize the work of the Cross, but to give it infinite value.  What distinguishes it from the eternal self-giving of the Trinity is Christ's taking up of fallen humanity unto Himself in His perfect sacrifice on Calvary, for by His entry as man into glory we somehow get in.  This connection between the inner life of the Trinity and the sacrifice on the Cross is absolutely essential.  It shows Calvary as a window looking out onto the "Godscape" of the Trinity.  Or better yet: a door.  Whereas other events are merely historical and end up by being swallowed in the past, the crucifixion of Christ is a door opening up onto the Trinity.  In the pierced heart of the Crucified, the inner life of God, the eternal surrender of Son to Father, is made present.  It is the one unique act which participates in the divine eternity, which conquers death and ends the old creation awaiting renewal in Christ.  Thus, while it did elapse as an event in 30 A.D. under Pontius Pilate, the spatio-temporal world of dates and events cannot contain it.  It is pre-eminently a Trinitarian and therefore eternal event.  We ourselves enter into this "Today" of the living God through the liturgy which takes us before the "Lamb standing as if slain" (Rev 5:6), Christ crucified and Risen, eternally present before the Father in the celestial temple.  This is why the Mass is not a “re-sacrificing” of Christ.  It is not, in fact, an “earthly” matter at all.  St. John Chrysostom sang like a bard of this mystery when he wrote that "When you see … all the people empurpled by that precious blood, can you think that you are still among men on earth?  Or are you not lifted up to Heaven?" Of course, in this life we still see "as in a glass, darkly", but if "dark" is this bright, what on Earth will “bright” be?

The Physical and the Spiritual are One

He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; not the God of the Platonists, the Gnostics, and the Manicheans.  Man in relation to his body is not an angel in an animal or a ghost in a machine.  One look into a child's face or lover's eyes quickly makes sawdust of the opinion that the body muffles the soul rather than expresses it.  In biblical thought, man in his body is more like a knight upon his charger.  Bristling, pawing, and neighing, it is an extension of his very self.  But if such a physical/spiritual contrast as you propose were to be maintained, it would quickly make nonsense of such episodes as when Elisha's bones (2 Kings 13:21), Paul's hankerchief (Acts 19:11-12), and spittle or mud applied to men's eyes by Christ (Jn 9:6) were all used in the divine healing process.  Worse still: it would mean that Christ's precious blood, because it is physical, could not be used to wash away men's sins, which are spiritual.  But no one would maintain that Christ's bodily sacrifice on the Cross was not also a spiritual act.  (In our actions it is not either body or spirit that are working any more than it is either this blade or that one in a pair of scissors that are cutting.  Both are uniquely fitted, intersect, and intertwine).  And it is the same with the sacraments.  In baptism, a simple sinner's prayer is not enough.  Christ also commands that physical water be used.  In the healing of the sick, James is not content with Our Fathers alone.  He also calls for the elders to anoint the sick with oil (Jas 5:14).  And it is likewise with the Eucharist.  Christ commands not mere pious reflection or tearful eulogies about His saving work ("Do this in memory of me"); He also populates the event with true food and true drink.  And why not given that man, as even the ancient Greeks knew, is the rationale animal?  The one being who combines both the spiritual and the animal in one indivisible person.  C.S. Lewis was a firm believer in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.  He pegged this exact theme when he wrote (no doubt pipe in teeth): "More than that, the most completely animal and self-regarding of all our appetites has been chosen to become the vehicle of our most strictly commanded communion with God: 'Eat this, drink this'.  It looks as if God, or God's plans for our Redemption were not in the common sense of the word half so 'spiritual' as the higher paganism supposed.  He seems to descend deepest into nature when He intends to lift us highest.  Blood and guts and glands and genes and things of that sort don't repel Him.  Negative spirituality, departure from the animal and instinctive, doesn't of itself seem to please Him particularly." I am sure - I feel it in my bones - that if we could get rid of the pseudo-Manicheanism which says that spirit is spirit and matter is matter and never the twain shall meet, that we will have advanced light years in this dispute and helped Evangelicals want rather than wince at sacramental communion with Christ.  "In the ecclesiastical hearth" Peter Kreeft writes, "the sacramental fire is burning".  Why not come in and warm up?

With deep regard and many prayers for you and yours,
God bless you richly.

David Elliot,
September 9, 2002.