your not an anti Catholic or you cover it up enough that it doesn't bother me
Thank you Ray. I try not to act "anti-Catholic", I dont think that I am, but I will admit that years ago, when I first was born-again I harbored resentment against the Catholic Church, because I felt they let me down, that I never heard the simple Gospel from them. I have come to realize over the years however that people could've hammered me with the Gospel day and night, but until the day and the hour came, that the Holy Spirit prepared my heart and opened my ears, until such a time as I reached a level of maturity that enabled me to understand, (and yes I was nearly 30 so I must've been a little slow!), the Gospel was like so much gibberish to me. My younger sister, who is the only other one in my immediate family who is not Catholic, was born again many years before I was, and belongs to very strict sect which comes out of the same tradtion as the Nazarenes. She helped me a great deal to get over myself in that regard. We have often discussed the Catholic church and our experiences growing up Catholic, and we agree that in many ways we were blessed.

(And as an aside Ray, and any others who read this, if you ever think of me, please remember to pray for my sister. She was diagnosed last august with an extremely rare incurable lung disease, and the doctors say this disease usually kills with in 5 to 10 years. She has a 5 year old daughter and I know that weighs heavily on her, to think of leaving her child.)

But anyway back to the discussion at hand:

As I've been looking into some of these issues recently, I ran across the most interesting article on the Eucharist which was taken from the Ecyclopedia Britannica. It is very long, so I am not going paste in here, but the link that I found it at is: http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/EMS_EUD/EUCHARIST_Gr_evXapurria_thanksg.html
It talks about some of the ancient symbolism involved, some of the word meanings that we touched on in the other threads and it also talks about how the doctrine of transubstantiation developed. After reading it, I felt that it supported my idea expressed on the other thread that the concept real presence does not equal transubstantiation.

I'm going to excerpt a few portions that I found interesting.

In this article the history of the rite is first traced up to A.D. 200 in documents taken in their chronological order; differences of early and later usage are then discussed; lastly, the meaning of the original rite is examined.

The fourth gospel, written perhaps A.D. 90-100, sublimates the rite, in harmony with its general treatment of the life of Jesus: " I am the living bread which cometh down out of heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die " (John vi. si). As in 1 Cor. x. the flesh of Christ is contrasted with the manna which saved not the Jews from death, so here the latter ask: " How can this man give us his flesh to eat? " and Jesus answers: " Amen, Amen I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves. .. . He that eateth' my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me and I in him." In an earlier passage, again in reference to the manna, Jesus is called " the bread of God, which cometh down out of heaven, and giveth life unto the world." They ask: " Lord, ever more give us this bread," and he answers: " I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall not hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst." This writer's thought is coloured by the older speculations of
Philo, who in metaphor called the Loges the heavenly bread and food, the cupbearer and cup of God; and he seems even to protest against a literal interpretation of the words of institution, since he not only pointedly omits them in his account of the Last Supper, but in v. 63 of this chapter writes: " It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit and are life."
The next document in chronological order is the so-called Teaching of the Apostles (A.D. 9o-110). This assigns prayers and rubrics for the celebration of the Eucharist:
IX.
" s. Now with regard to the Thanksgiving, thus give ye thanks.
" 2. First concerning the cup :We give thanks to thee,our Father, for the holy vine' of David thy servant, which thou didst make known to us through Jesus thy servant;2 to thee be the glory for ever.
" 3. And concerning the broken bread :We give thanks to thee, our Father, for the life and knowledge which thou didst make known to us through Jesus thy servant; to thee be the glory for ever.
" 4. As this broken bread was (once) scattered on the face of the mountains and, gathered together, became one,3 even so may thy Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into thy kingdom; for thine is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ for ever.
` 5. But let no one eat or drink of your Thanksgiving (Eucharist), but they who have been baptized into the name of the Lord; for concerning this the Lord hath said, Give not that which is holy unto the dogs.4
X.
" L Then, after being filled, thus give ye thanks:
" 2. We give thanks to thee, holy Father, for thy holy name, which thou hast caused to dwell in our hearts, and for the knowledge and faith and immortality which thou didst make known to us through Jesus Christ thy servant; to thee be the glory for ever.
" 3. Thou Almighty Sovereign,didst create all things for thy name's sake, and food and drink thou didst give to men for enjoyment, that they should give thanks unto thee; but to us thou didst of thy grace give spiritual food and drink and life eternal through thy servant.
` 4. Before all things, we give thee thanks that thou art mighty; to thee be the glory for ever.
" 5. Remember, Lord, thy church to deliver it from all evil, and to perfect it in thy love, and gather it together from the four winds,' the sanctified, unto thy kingdom, which thou bast prepared for it; for thine is the power and the glory for ever.
" 6. Come grace, and pass this world away. Hosanna to the God of David! If any one is holy, let him come. If any one is not, let him repent. Maranatha 8 Amen.
" But allow the prophets to give thanks as much as they will." -From a subsequent section, ch. xiv. r, we learn that the
Eucharist was on Sunday:" Now when ye are assembled together on the Lord's day of the Lord, break bread and give thanks, having first confessed your transgressions, so that your sacrifice may be pure."
The above, like the uninterpolated Lucan account, places the
cup first and has no mention of the body and blood of Christ. But in this last and other respects it contrasts with the other synoptic and with the Pauline accounts. The cup is not the blood of Jesus, but the holy vine of David, revealed through Jesus; and the holy vine can but signify the spiritual Israel, the Ecclesia or church or Messianic Kingdom, into which the faithful are to be gathered.
The one loaf, as in Paul, symbolizes the unity of the ecclesia, but the cup and bread, given for enjoyment, are symbols at best of the spiritual food and drink of the life eternal given of grace by the Almighty Father through his servant (lit. boy) Jesus. The bread and wine are indeed an offering to God of what is his own, pure because offered in purity of heart; but they are not interpreted of the sacrifice of Jesus' body broken on the cross, or of his blood shed for the remission of sin. It is not, as in Paul, a meal commemorative of Christ's death, nor connected with the Passover, as in the Synoptics. Least of all is it a sacramental eating of the flesh and drinking of the blood of Jesus, a perpetual renewal of kinship, physical and spiritual, with him. The teaching rather breathes the atmosphere of the fourth gospel, which sets the Last Supper before the feast of the Passover (xiii. I), and pointedly omits Christ's institution of the Eucharist, substituting for it the washing of his disciples' feet. The blessing of the Bread and Cup, as an incident in a feast of Christian brotherhood, is all that the Didache has in common with Paul and the Synoptists. The use of the words " after being filled," in x. r, implies that the brethren ate heartily, and that the cup and bread formed no isolated episode. The Baptized alone are admitted to this Supper, and they only after confession
Transubstantiation.-In the primitive age no one asked how Christ was present in the Eucharist, or how the elements became his body and blood . The Eucharist formed part of an agape or love feast until the end of the 2nd century, and in parts of Christendom continued to be so much later . It was, save where animal sacrifices survived, the Christian sacrifice, par excellence, the counterpart for the converted of the sacrificial communions of paganism; and though charged with higher significance than these, it yet reposed on a like background of religious usage and beliefs . But when the Agape on one side and paganism on the other receded into a dim past, owing to the enhanced sacrosanctity of the Eucharist and because of the severe edicts of the emperor Theodosius and his successors, the psychological back-ground fell away, and the Eucharist was left isolated and hanging in the air . Then men began to ask themselves what it meant . Rival schools of thought sprang up, and controversy raged over it, as it had aforetime about the homoousion, or the two natures . Thus the sacrament which was intended to be a bond of peace, became a chief cause of dissension and bloodshed, and was often discussed as if it were a vulgar talisman .

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But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;
1 Corinthians 1:27