Protestantism was falsified here on TOL

Derf

Well-known member
no Protestant calls Matthew 18:20 an allusion to Christ's presence in worship services.
I can assure you that they do. Though not as a wafer with wine.
I was trying to save you the time. It is a "@God's Truth" thread, she saw to that, and that means that it was set on fire! It is so full of her skubalon that nobody would ever think to read through it,
New word for me, skubalon. Fitting, for the most part, though she used to get things right occasionally.
I've seen every argument. @csuguy makes the most creative and powerful argument against the Real Presence that's ever been put in print, and it was literally swiftly dispatched, not only in the thread, but in real time, you can tell with the dates of the posts that it didn't require a lot of thought for @brewmama to respond.
The problem you have is that you’ve (including all Catholics??) defined a new concept that doesn’t appear anywhere else in the way you use it: “the Real Presence”, and you only apply that to the wine and wafers. Jesus wasn’t so specific, nor was He introducing a unique concept. “Lo I am with you always…”. “I will never leave you nor forsake you…”. “Behold I stand at the door and knock…and will come in and sup with him.” You can pretend it was some liturgy Christ was introducing in Matt 18:20, but you have no evidence.
 
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Clete

Truth Smacker
Silver Subscriber
His shed blood being payment for sin requires a liturgical framework in order to be valid, and not just some random death that was after the fact proclaimed to be fulfillment of prophecy.
Do you simply reject every aspect of God's use of symbols and types?

Do you think it was random or by accident that the Jews were killing the Lamb of God on the very day that they were killing their Passover lambs?

I mean how much more liturgical could not only the death but also the burial and resurrection of Christ get than for it to take place on the precise religious time table that God Himself put into place for Israel thousands of years in advance?

Who in the world ever suggested that it was a random death which was only declared to be a fulfillment of prophecy after the fact, anyway?

No protestant that I've ever read has ever said any such thing. This feels like something you're parroting from some book or website you recently read and does not relate to the discussion at hand but if its just you trying to sound educated or something then I, for one, am not impressed.

This framework is the New Covenant, not the Old, which of course didn't have any part of it concerned with a man being the offering. It was always an animal, not a man. And it didn't have any part talking about the priest Himself being the offering either, but in the N.C. the Lord Jesus is the everlasting high priest.
So the death of Christ wasn't a thought in God's mind before Jesus spoke of the New Covenant at the last supper? Is that what you're trying to say? That the crucifixion is valid because of the Eucharist?

If so, you are worse than delusional, you're a cultist. Such a belief cannot fit within the Christian faith and you're no more a believer in Christ than are the Mormons.

Transubstantiation and especially the distinction between transubstantiation and the Real Presence (which is actually the topic here) was dealt with in the range of posts I advised that you peruse to get yourself caught up to speed on what we're actually trying to talk about in this thread Clete.
Yeah, well this website is already about 98% a waste of my time as it is. I'm not going to go read an entire thread so that you don't have to go through the trouble of making an argument yourself.

And don't act like there's a distinction between transubstantiation and the "Real Presence" unless you (YOU) are prepared to explain what that distinction is.

"Transubstantiation is the teaching that during the Mass, at the consecration in the Lord’s Supper (Communion), the elements of the Eucharist, bread and wine, are transformed into the actual body and blood of Jesus and that they are no longer bread and wine but only retain their appearance of bread and wine.​
The term “Real Presence,” when used by Roman Catholics, refers to Christ’s physical presence in the form of the bread and the wine that have been transubstantiated into His literal body and blood." - carm.org​

If that is inaccurate then it's on you to prove your definition of terms because that's what the whole rest of the world thinks these terms mean.

Clete
 
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Idolater

"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
As real as Matthew 18:20
" For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them."

That means Mass. Just like 'breaking bread' means Mass. Confer Hebrews 10:25 " the assembling of ourselves together"
or

2 Cor 13:5 Jesus Christ is in me

Really.
Because you examined yourself and your conduct convinces you; no moral or ethical 'red flags'.

Very similar to how we examine ourselves before receiving the Eucharist, 1 Cor 11:27-28 " whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. 28 But let a man examine himself"

Because if our conduct tells us we're 'unworthy' to receive, then receiving the Blessed Sacrament is tantamount to " not discerning the Lord's body" (1 Cor 11:29) which of course is Really Present during Communion (Matthew 18:20).

2 Cor 13:2 Paul " I write to them which heretofore have sinned" 2 Cor 13:5 " Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves." (Compare Galatians 6:4 Paul " let every man prove his own work" Same 'prove' word)

2 Cor 13:7 Paul " I pray to God that ye do no evil"

I'm not saying 2 Cor 13:5 necessarily means Mass like Matthew 18:20 necessarily means Mass and or the sacraments. I'm saying that 2 Cor 13:5 means that your conduct can indicate whether you really believe in Christ or if you're only pretending.

If your conduct isn't becoming of a Christian, then when you examine yourself you're not going to find that "Jesus Christ is in you" but instead that you're a "reprobate".

Is that what you were trying to say?
 

Idolater

"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
You're catholic, but not Catholic.
No, you're just Catholic; you're just not 'in full communion,' which is basically short hand for formal 'worthiness' (cf. 1st Corinthians 11:27 &29) to receive Holy Communion.

There's nothing stopping you from attending Mass though.
 

Idolater

"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
I can assure you that they do. Though not as a wafer with wine.
Then if Matthew 18:20 is interpreted that way, then it meant Mass all along (all through history), and Mass is where 'breaking bread' occurred, Communion, where Christ when instituting the Eucharist said His words "this is My body . . ."

You're making my point for me.
New word for me, skubalon. Fitting, for the most part, though she used to get things right occasionally.

The problem you have is that you’ve (including all Catholics??) defined a new concept that doesn’t appear anywhere else in the way you use it: “the Real Presence”, and you only apply that to the wine and wafers. Jesus wasn’t so specific, nor was He introducing a unique concept. “Lo I am with you always…”. “I will never leave you nor forsake you…”. “Behold I stand at the door and knock…and will come in and sup with him.” You can pretend it was some liturgy Christ was introducing in Matt 18:20, but you have no evidence.
I didn't suggest Matthew 18:20 'introduced liturgy'. What I did was interpret the relatively ambiguous Matthew 18:20 in the light of the unambiguous historical account of the earliest Church, combined with the comparably unambiguous account in the Scripture of the Last Supper.

Also I object to saying that the Real Presence concept is "new." The debate in the OP's linked thread disabled that claim entirely. You're welcome to offer a different tack but you're going to have to address the argument that @brewmama set out.
 

Idolater

"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
That some groups emerging from a movement entertains something that is wrong does not invalidate the origin of the movement, the principles of the movement or the movement as a whole.
CORRECT.
That would be a weird form of a genetic fallacy. Nor does the abuse of a principle prove the invalidity of the principle itself, as the medieval expression goes: abusus non tollit usum

Here are some facts for you: The Lutheran World Federation, The Anglican Communion and The World Methodist Council make up a body of about 240 million believers, who are also protestants and who do not in any way deny the real presence of Christ in the eucharist. That shows that there is no necessary relationship between being protestant and denying the real presence.
There are tons of Catholics who don't believe in the Real Presence, like @annabenedetti here. The fact of the matter is that the earliest Church uniformly believed in the Real Presence, and that Calvinist Protestants taught against it.

As for Lutherans and 'high church' Anglicans; the common belief in Catholicism and Orthodoxy is actually that Christ is really present in the sacraments. Catholicism and Orthodoxy disagree about episcopal polity and or politics, but they both uniformly agree on the sacraments, and Christ is present in their valid celebration, and their valid celebration (biblically) is presided over by a member of the order of bishops, Holy Orders being one of the sacraments.

Lutherans and Anglicans and Methodists and all other Protestantisms don't have any valid bishops. You could argue that high church Anglicanism is overseen by valid bishops, but this claim is damaged by the trend of Anglican clergy converting to Catholicism at a remarkable rate.
 

Idolater

"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
This subject was even addressed by Dr. Leighton Flowers on his show Soteriology 101 in a video a few months ago.


Long story short, anyone who believes in transsubstantiation, et al, are, like the people Jesus was talking to in this chapter, completely missing the point of what Christ was teaching, and it's because they miss the point that they came up with such odd ideas.
He's just begging the question; just declaring. I can do that too, and I don't need a PhD to do it either. Why listen to someone who's just assuming that his claim is true? He needed to do the same thing that needs to be done to my OP, if it's to be corrected.

Some Protestant needs to show that the Church at some point relatively near the Apostles' lifetime believed that "This is My body" is a metaphor, but you can't find that evidence anywhere, because it doesn't exist. You're left with believing that all the Apostles, and probably especially Paul, were dreadful communicators and teachers, for the whole Church to wind up believing that a metaphor was supposed to be taken literally. Maybe especially John. I don't know how much more misleading 1st Corinthians 11 or the second half of John 6 are in confusing people into believing in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

But this is what your Protestant position requires. You don't have any reason to respect the authority of the Apostles, since they permitted the whole Church to make such a terrific error, and basically right away too. According to you, it took the Church near 1500 years before this very early error could even be challenged, let alone somewhat corrected.
 

Idolater

"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
This thread looks to me like an example of the doctrine of probable opinion.
Is there some Protestant doctrine that isn't probable opinion? I mean there's no Protestant authority on doctrine, or on anything that the Bible may mean. Every Protestant doctrine has to be 'probable opinion,' because you can't validly appeal to any other authority, because there is no valid universal authority to appeal to, in Protestantism. "Scripture Alone."

But what does the Scripture mean?

Well I think it means this. And I think it means that. Well I just believe what it says. I do too. We all believe what it says, but what do we believe that it means? How do we sustain our claim? Is there just one right answer? How do you know? Without either begging the question, or appealing to authority? Well I use logic. So do I, so if we disagree on what Scripture means, then which one of us is using logic better?
 
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