In a previous article, we looked at an objection to the Catholic doctrine on the Real Pressence from Protestant pastor Todd Baker: a literal interpretation of Jesus’ words “eat my flesh . . . drink my blood” leads to absurdity. Baker’s inferred absurdity is that by eating Jesus’ body and blood, we never physically hunger or thirst.
Baker argues that there’s another absurdity that necessarily follows from a literal interpretation of Jesus’ words—namely, that we will never physically die. Here’s how Baker puts the argument:
If the Romanist’s interpretation of John 6:50-51 [“if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever”], which requires a Catholic to physically eat and drink the flesh and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, were true, [then] no Roman Catholic would suffer death once the bread and wine of the Mass [are] eaten and drunk. The fact that death, the great leveler of all, has come to every person participating in the Mass of the Roman Catholic Church proves the literalist interpretation of Rome to be patently wrong and totally absurd.
We can put Baker’s argument into logical form in this way:
Premise 1: If Jesus intended a physical act of eating his flesh, then Catholics wouldn’t die.
Premise 2: But that’s absurd. Catholics obviously die.
Conclusion: Therefore, Jesus’ words weren’t meant to be taken literally.
The key premise, obviously, is premise one. So that’s what we’ll be targeting here.
Our first response is that Baker’s argument makes a problematic assumption. It assumes that if the cause of everlasting life is a physical cause—the act of eating Jesus’ flesh in the Eucharist—then the effect, everlasting life, necessarily must be a physical effect—i.e., perpetual preservation of our current physical life.
But why must we accept this interpretative principle? Baker doesn’t say.
Surely, it’s not the idea itself. There’s nothing in the idea of truly partaking of Jesus’ flesh and blood that demands perpetual preservation of our current physical life.
We can conceive of a real partaking of Jesus’ flesh and blood being a cause of us “living forever” in the sense of living forever spiritually in heaven. This cause-effect pattern seems to be supported by the Greek word used for “life” when Jesus says, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you have no life in you” (John 6:53). The Greek word for “life” here is zōē, which refers to divine life.
We can also conceive of a real partaking of Jesus’ flesh being a cause of us “living forever” in the sense of physically living forever at the end of time after the bodily resurrection. Verse 54 seems to support this cause-effect pattern: “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
Finally, we can conceive of a real partaking of Jesus’ flesh and blood being a cause of us “living forever” in both of the above senses—the current life of heaven and the everlasting bodily life at the end of time. The above two passages quoted seem to support this both-and approach.
So, contrary to what Baker thinks, a literal interpretation of Jesus’ words doesn’t necessarilyentail preservation of our current physical life. To state it differently, physical death is not incompatible with a literal interpretation of Jesus’ words to eat his flesh and drink his blood.
There’s a second problem with Baker’s argument: he doesn’t follow his own interpretive principle. Recall that his interpretative principle is that if we assert a physical cause, like an act of eating Christ’s body in the Eucharist, then the effect, everlasting life, must be physical as well.
Now, Baker interprets Jesus’ words “eat my flesh . . . drink my blood” as referring to the need to believe in him, which makes belief in Jesus the cause of the spiritual effect of life everlasting. And presumably Baker would agree that belief in Jesus often involves the physical act of verbally professing faith in Jesus. As Paul writes, “For man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved” (Rom. 10:10).
Yet Baker doesn’t think this physical act of belief necessarily entails that our current physical life be perpetually preserved. Why would a physical act of eating Jesus’ flesh in the Eucharist necessarily entail perpetual preservation of our current physical life, but the physical act of verbally professing faith in Christ wouldn’t? Seems a bit arbitrary.
Moreover, Baker interprets Jesus’ teaching on “life” as referring to “spiritual life forever.” So, for Baker, the physical act of faith in Christ is a cause of spiritual everlasting life. But if a physical act of professing faith in Christ can be a cause of spiritual everlasting life, then why can’t the physical act of eating Jesus’ flesh in the Eucharist be a cause of spiritual everlasting life?
Again, this is a bit arbitrary. Like in his objection we dealt with in our previous article, Baker commits the fallacy of special pleading.
Now, Baker goes on to argue that Jesus is merely trying to juxtapose the physical bread in the wilderness (the manna), which didn’t preserve physical life, and the spiritual bread that Jesus is, which preserves spiritual life. Baker writes,
Jesus was simply using the figure of bread, the common food of that day, to point out the contrast between that physical bread, typified by the manna, that when eaten a person still dies, and Christ, the spiritual bread, who, when received by faith, brings spiritual life forever.
But the juxtaposition would still work on the literal reading of Jesus’ words. Physical bread in the desert left God’s people to die. Our spiritual bread, Jesus’ flesh in the Eucharist, doesn’t leave us to die, spiritually. Where physical bread preserved physical life in the wilderness, our supernatural bread, Jesus’ flesh in the Eucharist, preserves our spiritual life.
In fact, the literal interpretation makes more sense as to why Jesus would call his flesh the “new bread from heaven.” If Jesus’ body is truly present under the appearance of bread, then it makes sense to refer to his flesh as the new bread.
As we said before, we can applaud Baker for rejecting an interpretation that he thinks leads to an absurdity. But, again, he misses the mark in inferring the absurdity from a literal interpretation of Jesus’ words “eat my flesh . . . drink my blood.”
***This article was originally published by Catholic Answers Magazine Online on May 14, 2024.