Re: Is Jesus honored when people make a lie in His honor?

Michael S. Morris wrote:

> Well, after having tried to dodge the analogy, I'm
> tempted to revisit it:

As with most other analogies, there is a point where it breaks down. I'm 
not sure I want to go the direction you are going, though I can 
understand that in your mind it might have merit.

I guess that means that I'm dodging it now?


> Hmm, I would have said there are all kinds of
> biblical admonitions prescribing worship of Yahweh
> to be done in only certain ways, and excluding
> non-consecrated persons from all sorts of
> parts of the worship service.

The Old Testament examples you point out have a specific purpose. In the 
OT God is very protective of the religious customs and practices because 
they are metaphors for the spiritual truths that would be revealed to 
mankind later.

These are the metaphors that Jesus and the apostles would use to 
illustrate the spiritual truths that they taught.

Destroy the metaphor and you destroy its usefulness as a tool of 
instruction. Or your risk people drawing wrong conclusions from the 
metaphor.

An example would be Moses striking the rock in the desert when the 
Israelites needed water. This is a metaphor of Jesus (the chief 
cornerstone that the builders rejected) being struck (that is, 
crucified) and pouring forth living water (the Spirit of God living in 
individual's lives). When the Israelites needed more water, Moses was 
instructed to speak to the rock, illustrating that once a person has 
entered into the "new covenant in my blood" with Jesus, it is not 
necessary to crucify Him again and again for forgiveness to continue. 
One living in the covenant needs only to confess his sins to be forgiven.

God was angry because Moses ruined the metaphor when he struck the rock 
a second time.


> Well, yes, but I don't buy that 1 Cor 11:27-30
> interprets correctly this way at all. In fact, if anything,
> it seems to me to underline what I understand the Catholic 
> position. That is, that there is a real change of the host into
> the body of Christ, and that this is accomplished through
> the quite supernatural power of the priest, derived in
> the authority of the church universal through the
> apostolic succession and laying on of hands all the 
> way from Christ. And one, in order to take communion
> worthily, needs to be confessed and absolved of one's sins,
> and in full faith in the miracle of transubstantiation.

I don't see this spelled out anywhere in scripture.



> I'm just saying, without a signpost---clarity
> in the invitation---one doesn't necessarily know the proper
> etiquette of participation or non-participation.

Understood.



> Also, it strikes me that a good Catholic, visiting a Protestant
> church, might not take communion there either, and out of
> a totally different reason---that their "communion" isn't
> a proper one, is a mockery and a blasphemy of the real thing.

I understand this to be the official Catholic position regarding 
Protestant communion. Likewise a Protestant would (or could) find it 
blasphemous to suggest that a man has the spiritual power to turn simple 
bread and wine into the literal body and blood of Jesus. Many 
Protestants would view worship of the host as idol worship.

--Scott