Pope said other churches are "defective", is he right?

[GuidoHunter]

Jesus' offering of his body and blood was only a representation of his spirit? Man, those apostles must have been pretty dumb if they couldn't understand that. Even if the Jews were shocked at the idea of cannibalism, they were taking him literally, as did the apostles, and I won't consider that they were worried about the cannibalism aspect.

"This saying is hard; who can accept it?" (John 6:60)

Believing a figurative interpretation of Jesus' salvation isn't too difficult to comprehend. Taking him literally, however, as the Jews and the apostles did, and hearing that you must eat the flesh and drink the blood of your savior, is. Jesus then went back to the apostles and explained his words because they were having difficulty comprehending them.

"How can this man give us [his] flesh to eat?" (6:52)

That's the Jews talking. That doesn't sound to me like they were worried about getting in trouble for cannibalism; rather, they were thinking what the apostles were thinking. It's a difficult concept to understand how the literal eating of flesh and blood happens.

Even so, the people who followed Jesus around for his entire life and the people who were right in front of him took him literally, so why, these thousands of years later, is he now speaking figuratively? Not even a hundred years after Jesus' death, Ignatius was writing to the Smyrnaeans, "[heretics] abstain from Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the Flesh or our Savior Jesus Christ." Forty years after him, Justin was doing the same, then Irenaeaus and Cryil, all before 350 AD. All these were before the Council of Hippo and didn't have the Scripture to go on. As such, their information came from the apostles and their successors.

Why, if the passage was intended to be taken literally, did John not use the classical Greek word for human eating, which is often used metaphorically, but instead use the one that refers to animals' eating? That choice was surely used to emphasize the reality of the flesh and blood of Jesus.

Aaaaand, AWPerative won't be rejoining us, not that he said anything worth discussing, anyway.

--Guido

http://andy.mikee385.com