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Misamplified Metaphors
People love metaphors – they are the salt of our linguistic cuisine, enhancing the flavor of our verbal diet. Still, they can be abused. I remember learning some time ago of mixed metaphors. I won’t get into those now. Instead, let’s talk about misamplified metaphors. These are cases where people are attempting to take an…
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Prayers and Living Water
“This evening” Benedict XVI concluded, “you caused us to turn our hearts to Mary in prayer, the most beloved prayer of Christian tradition. Yet you also led us back to the beginning of our journey of faith, to the liturgy of Baptism, the moment in which we became Christian: an invitation always to drink from…
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Three Mighty Men and Transubstantiation
There are probably a thousand great arguments against transubstantiation already. Here’s one more for your repertoire. Sometimes folks in the Roman (or even in the Lutheran) communion make the argument that Jesus didn’t say “this stands for my body,” but rather “this is my body.” It is true, of course, that he said one and…
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Augustine on the Bread and Cup as Sign, Symbol, Sacrament, Figure and other Figurative Descriptions
Another way in which we can understand that Augustine did not hold to transubstantiation is that Augustine describes the body and blood in terms of them being a sign, symbol, sacrament, or other figurative designations. Perhaps more can and should be said about what Augustine means by “sacrament,” and perhaps some of the following examples…
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Augustine – Metaphor – Bodily Presence
In this clip, we respond to Mr. William Albrecht’s continued (but unsupported) insistence that apparently terms like “the bread becomes the body of Christ” or “the bread is the body of Christ” must be understood neither literally (as actual flesh with skin, veins, DNA, etc.) nor analogically but transubstantially. We note that Mr. Albrecht doesn’t…