This is a really good 4-part video series featuring a Lutheran pastor, Dr. Eric Phillips, talking about the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist from a Protestant perspective. It's worth noting that not all Protestants deny the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, but only the theological descendants of Ulrich Zwingli who held to a Real Absence of Christ in the Eucharist as a pure memorialist symbol.
Dr. Phillips does a really good job talking about how Christians, for the first 1500 years, unequivocally taught that Christ is truly present in the Eucharist. Even Martin Luther taught and believed that the bread and wine truly become the body and blood of Christ as did the entire Christian church up until that time. You can read countless quotes from the Early Church Fathers in the first few centuries of the Church testifying to this reality. Some people were martyred for the Eucharist and Christians in Rome were persecuted because they were "cannibals." Dr. Phillips addresses this charge in the last of this 4-part video series.
One quote from this first video struck me as quite profound. Dr. Phillips said that "if the whole Church of God received the Word of God to mean a certain something for the first 1500 years, maybe that's what it meant to them in their own language in their own day, these people who were closer historically and linguistically to Christ and the Apostles when they taught these things."
Here is the video;
The preponderance of the evidence biblically, historically and logically is squarely in favor of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Is it a hard teaching? Yes. Does it scandalize the senses? Yes. But is it true? Yes. It's a mysterious miracle that the vast majority of Christians to this day believe in and only a subset of Christians that deny it. Does might make right? Does the majority determine truth? No, but it does raise questions about why it was only 1500 years after the fact, that certain Christians groups denied the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Why?
To say one believes in the creation of the world ex-nihilo, the Virgin Birth, miracles, the Resurrection and the Ascension into Heaven but yet reject the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist raises questions about the origin of the denial of Christ in the Eucharist. After all, if one believes in miracles, wouldn't one be beholden to believe in the miracle that Christ taught in John 6?
Jesus taught His followers about the Eucharist in John 6:53-56.
"So Jesus said to them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him."
Jesus says this in response to the Jews who are wondering how he is saying this (which also means they didn't understand it as a metaphor) and Jesus ups the ante a bit in verses 54 and 56 by using the verb "trogon" which in Greek means "to chew or to gnaw." And then, all of His followers deserted Him except for the Twelve Apostles. He made no attempt to stop His followers from leaving.
That doesn't sound like a metaphor to me. It sounds like He meant what He said.
Catholics, all Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox teach this. Lutherans and Anglicans teach this. Why is it that only a handful of Christian breakaway groups denied it?
The real answer is that it was too Catholic. But is "too Catholic" a criterion for truth? The late Fr. Peter Gillquist, in his book "Becoming Orthodox," coined the term "Romophobia" to refer to the fear that some Evangelicals have of all things Catholic.
Isn't it time that all Christians got past things being "too Catholic" and got back to what the Church taught for all of Christendom?
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