THINKING ABOUT THE COMMAND, "YOU CANNOT TAKE LORD'S CUP AND DEMON'S CUP"
The Christian faith thinks Jesus is the only true God so if you eat his body in communion and drink his blood you cannot participate in pagan worship.
Paul may have written Colossians 2:16,17 which says nobody must judge you by
what you eat or drink or with regard to feasts for all these things are shadows
pointing to Jesus and the reality and clarity is found in Christ. If he
meant that nobody should judge you for ignoring Jewish rules about sacred meals,
then he could have meant Jesus' last supper too. It surely was a shadow
too! It is very general. So why not? Christianity judges those
who eat and drink communion in sin or who do not believe it is Jesus' body and
blood.
In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul tells his disciples to shun idol worship and to judge
for themselves what he says. He then says that the cup the Church blesses is a
sharing in the blood of Christ and the bread is a sharing in the body and that
all are united by partaking of the one bread. But the trouble is you can leave
this bit about the bread and drink out without missing it.
He says,
§ Shun idols and judge this as wrong yourselves.
§ He says the bread and cup are union with the body and blood of Jesus and that
we are one for we all share the one bread.
§ Consider how Israel are made sharers in the altar when they take what was
sacrificed on it and eat it.
§ What do I imply then that idol sacrifice amounts to anything?
§ No for idols are nothing but do not eat idol sacrifices for it is a communion
with demons.
§ You cannot drink the Lord’s cup and eat at his table and partake of a
cup offered to demons and partake of their table.
From this it is clear that the embolded doesn’t even fit in. It can be left out
for all it does is interrupt the flow. It looks like an insertion made not by
Paul but by a copyist who was less careful than Paul. If the bolded had any
value what was the point about going into how Israel regards sacrifices? It is
not clear how food and drink which are not sacrifices could have any
relationship or relevance when discussing how animal sacrifices on the altars of
Israel unite people with the altar.
My view is that the bolded material is possibly an insertion. But even if it is
not it only says that food and drink are being used to help love Jesus more and
love each other which can be said of any food that is shared in the name of
Jesus. We must remember that the people he was writing to brought food and drink
to worship to share for this very purpose to deepen fellowship. He complains
that some were not sharing properly so clearly what you took with you had to be
distributed to everybody. Then why does he say cup and not cups for they would
have been using several cups. Do you think if he was thinking of one communion
cup that one would do? Several would have been needed. Nothing can be read into
that. He singles out the bread for that was the main thing brought to the meals
and it was broken and shared following the Jewish tradition.
But Paul said in his last point about the Lord’s table and the Lord’s cup. This
is most likely hypothetical for the demon sacrifices did not involve drinking
from chalices and using a table but an altar. When it is hypothetical that means
that the embolded bit was an insertion, a forgery. The pagan sacrifices were not
comparable to communion as Christians practice it for they involved blood and
pouring wine over the burning carcass of the sacrifice. The sacrifices were
meant to bribe the gods for favours more than to unite the believers for this
unity was only false unity. So it is only hypothetical. Paul when saying you
cannot drink the cup of the Lord and eat at his table is using this as a
metaphor for saying you are friends with the Lord. He does not mean literal
eating and drinking. The proof of this is in the fact that the pagans did not
share chalices offered to demons. He knows that but he means it metaphorically
so the whole line is metaphorical.
Possibly Paul means if you have the cup of the Lord which would be animal blood
and the sacrifice of the Lord’s table which would be animal flesh then you
cannot partake of pagan sacrifices. He is talking symbolically in the sense that
the Christians have the right to partake of sacred things sacrificed to God in
the Temple and so they cannot partake of the cup of demons. He does not mean he
wants the Corinthians to eat the sacrifices and drink blood for the only place
sacrifice was allowed was in Jerusalem. It is symbolism for he doesn’t literally
want them to drink animal blood which was forbidden by Jewish law and not
practiced at Jewish rites. The symbolism of what he said indicates that the
bolded bit which talks literally must be a forgery.
The subject arose about the matter of Christians eating pagan sacrificial meat very early on in the Church. Acts 15 has the apostles directing the Church to abstain from such meat. It follows that if the Eucharist is not the literal body of Christ and presented to you as if it is then it is a sin to eat it. Thus going to communion in a Catholic Church is a sin. It is the same as a pagan sacrifice. The problem is not so much that it is a pagan sacrifice but intended to perform false worship.
For Paul, anybody eating flesh sacrificed to idols is okay. The food is unaffected by the worship for those Gods do not exist. However if you think they do you are worshipping demons. This is a clear statement that the modern view that well-meaning sincerity is enough is rubbish. It is believing in pagan gods that is bad. Thus believing wrongly that the Eucharist is Jesus is idolatry. Not all the pagan gods were that bad but idolatry or the worship of those beings was strongly condemned.
THE FEAST
In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul says he will not commend those who get drunk and won’t
share when they meet together for their holy meals. He then says it is because
the meal is a memorial of the body and blood of Jesus that he can’t commend
them. But that doesn’t really fit for he never explains why the meal being a
memorial should mean that people don’t abuse the meal. The passage makes more
sense and flows better if you leave out the entire stuff about the last supper
and the body and blood of Jesus. The verse before that stuff says something
like, “Will I commend your behaviour when you meet to eat? No I will not. And
the bit after runs, “So when you gather together to eat, wait for one another.”
If the portion is an insertion by a fraudulent disciple of Paul’s that means
that there is no authority whatsoever for celebrating the Lord’s supper with the
body and blood of Jesus stuff. It could well be an uninspired writing of Paul
that he discarded and somebody took it and stuck it in his letter to forge
evidence that the rite was celebrated from the start of the Church.
There is no proof that we should hold that the Christians that though they might
have had breaking of bread ceremonies just to be friendly practiced anything
remotely resembling holy communion as the Church now practices it.
In Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8 we read that if food upsets a brother the
believer must not eat it for it is downgrading a weak conscience and making the
brother vulnerable to falling away from the faith. This is interesting
concerning some would have had doubts about drinking wine. But the New Testament
records of what Paul wrote nowhere suggest using wine for the Lord's Supper.
Others would not have ate bread they thought was turned into an idol of Jesus.
Those offended by idol worship would never have being able to assimilate and
revere the notion that bread and drink can become the body and blood of Jesus.
Paul's diplomacy suggests that using wine, saying the food is Jesus were later
inventions he would have opposed strenuously.
In summary, there is no evidence that the Bible asks us to say this is my body
or blood over bread and wine. Even if it did there would be no reason to think
it was an obligation or command. All it says is that we think of Jesus when we
eat bread and of his blood when we drink. All the theology that Christians have
built on the Eucharist is nonsense for the Eucharist isn’t even obligatory or
authorised by Christ.
BOOKS CONSULTED
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Dublin, 1954
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Missouri, 1970
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Chino, 1985
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London, 1986
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The Early Church, Henry Chadwick, Pelican, Middlesex, 1987
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This is My Body, This is My Blood, Bob and Penny Lord, Journeys of Faith,
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The Web
Transubstantiation, Is it a True Doctrine?
http://www.geocities.com/christian_apologist2001/
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