Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. (54) Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. (55) For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. (56) He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.(6:53-56)
Having been a life-long Protestant, I have always heard these verses interpreted in a figurative or symbolic manner. When preachers or writers have broached this subject in my past, they have consistently ignored any idea of the Eucharist and focused merely on communing with Christ by believing on Him or by reading His Word.
What came as a surprise to me is Early Christians like St. Cyprian of Carthage (d. 258) interpreted this passage literally in the following text from On the Lord’s Prayer (section 18):
As the prayer goes forward, we ask and say, “Give us this day our daily bread.” And this may be understood both spiritually and literally, because either way of understanding it is rich in divine usefulness to our salvation. For Christ is the bread of life; and this bread does not belong to all men, but it is ours. And according as we say, “Our Father,” because He is the Father of those who understand and believe; so also we call it “our bread,” because Christ is the bread of those who are in union with His body. And we ask that this bread should be given to us daily, that we who are in Christ, and daily receive the Eucharist for the food of salvation, may not, by the interposition of some heinous sin, by being prevented, as withheld and not communicating, from partaking of the heavenly bread, be separated from Christ’s body, as He Himself predicts, and warns, “I am the bread of life which came down from heaven. If any man eat of my bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread which I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world.” When, therefore, He says, that whoever shall eat of His bread shall live for ever; as it is manifest that those who partake of His body and receive the Eucharist by the right of communion are living, so, on the other hand, we must fear and pray lest any one who, being withheld from communion, is separate from Christ’s body should remain at a distance from salvation; as He Himself threatens, and says, “Unless ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye shall have no life in you.” And therefore we ask that our bread—that is, Christ—may be given to us daily, that we who abide and live in Christ may not depart from His sanctification and body.
Why had I never heard this before? Why had this obviously ancient interpretation completely overlooked? The answer has to be tradition.
The persons I had heard interpreting this passage had relegated this literal interpretation to the oblivion by calling it “Catholic.” (For so many, this one word is sufficient warrant to disregard even the most ancient and revered teachings of the church.) What is interesting to me is that the same ones who scream that “we must interpret Scripture literally” and who press the Book of Revelation into a literalistic interpretive mold (although it is a book of signs—see Revelation 1:1 and the word “signify”) are more than happy to interpret this passage figuratively.
The deciding factor for me in this text that pushed me toward the more literal interpretation is the reaction of the Jewish crowd that heard Jesus’ words in person. Notice verse 60 of John 6: “Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it?”
If Jesus had intended this saying about eating his flesh and drinking his blood to be taken figuratively, He could have called out as the many walked away, “Hey, disciples, you all misunderstood what I was saying. I didn’t want you to take this literally and get offended by it.” He said no such thing. These disciples being Jewish were offended at the thought of eating flesh and drinking blood. The idea of doing so in a figurative manner would have been no problem for them.
So we have here a good example of different interpretations flowing from the same passages of the Bible. Which one is correct? Not to be redundant but…that can only be answered by reference to tradition. As we have seen previously, the Early interpretation of the Eucharist is a literal one; later on the figurative interpretation came to the fore. One has to answer the question: which interpretation are we to believe? And then another salient question: why did we choose the one we did?
