If Catholics are right about John 6, every Christian is under divine command to celebrate the Eucharist. So is the Catholic Church right? Karlo Broussard joins us to explain why Catholics aren’t wrong.
Cy Kellett:
Hello, and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic beliefs. A lot going on as far as the Eucharist goes. We have all this kind of bad news that we’ve had in recent years about Catholics not accepting the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, or maybe not even knowing the teaching, which is, in some ways, equally or more horrifying, but always, there has been, certainly since the Protestant Reformation, there has been this ongoing debate between Catholics and Protestants about, “What exactly are we doing when we’re celebrating what most communities would call communion, and what did Jesus mean with all that stuff He said in John 6?,” because the Catholic certainly looks at John six and says, “Well, He’s talking about the Eucharist there,” and the Protestant person looks at that and says, “Well, He’s not talking in the way that you, Catholics say that He’s talking.” So this time, we ask about being wrong about the sixth chapter of John’s gospel and get into why Catholics aren’t wrong about John 6. Karlo Broussard is here as our guest.
Karlo, apologist here at Catholic Answers, the author of a whole bunch of books, including The New Relativism. You can get all his books over at shop.catholic.com. Karlo, thanks for being here.
Karlo Broussard:
Hey, Cy. Thanks for having me, buddy. It’s great to be with you. Yeah, we’re going to be pulling from some of the material in my book, Meeting the Protestant Response: How to Answer Common Comebacks to Catholic Arguments.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, okay. So Meeting the Protestant Response. All right, the follow-up to Meeting the Protestant Challenge.
Karlo Broussard:
That’s right. Yeah. So Meeting the Protestant Challenge is directed at defending Catholic beliefs against alleged contradictions with the Bible, and Meeting the Protestant Response is defending our Catholic arguments and the Bible passages that we appeal to, to justify our beliefs against Protestant responses. So that’s what we’re going to be doing today. We often appeal to John 6, where Jesus talks about eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood. Every Catholic who just gets started in apologetics, they know about John 6, right?
Cy Kellett:
Right. Exactly.
Karlo Broussard:
They often appeal. They might not know anything else in apologetics, but they know John 6, man, “Eat My Flesh and drink My Blood.” And so we have a Catholic understanding and interpretation of that. We’re appealing to that as evidence for Jesus’ real presence and the Eucharist, but our Protestant brothers and sisters have some sophisticated and on the surface reasonable comebacks to our appeal to Jesus’ teaching in John 6 and our literal interpretation of that, and so in a particular chapter in my book, Meeting the Protestant Response, I articulate some of those responses, and so I figured we’d talk about a couple of them here.
Cy Kellett:
Again, keeping with the general way that you go about these things, people who disagree with me, it’s not ’cause they didn’t read the Bible or it’s just so obvious. Often, it’s not so obvious, or if it was once obvious, then arguments have been made that have come up over the years that need to be dealt with as they come up. So give us the basic Catholic argument then. The Catholic reads John 6 and says, “What about it?”
Karlo Broussard:
Yeah, so the first premise is to establish the fact from the text that Jesus’ audience understood Him literally, and we have evidence of this from the Jews in verse 52, I think it is, if my memory serves me correctly. “How can this Man give us His Flesh to eat?,” they say, in response to Jesus saying, “The bread that I will give for the life of the world is My Flesh,” and then they’re freaking out, right? “How can this Man give us His Flesh to eat?” They’re not interpreting Him to be speaking figuratively there. They do not take Him to be using the language of eating His Flesh in a figurative way.
They take Him to be speaking literally, that’s why they’re freaking out over it. Even His disciples in verses 60 through 61 there, this is a hard saying. Who can accept it? So even the disciples are struggling with Jesus’ teaching, to eat His Flesh and drink His Blood, and that’s after Jesus affirms it six different times within eight verses that we need to eat His Flesh and drink His Blood, and then they walk away seemingly based on that teaching, and we’ll get to this in a few moments. Catholics often appeal to His disciples walking away from Him as evidence that they took Jesus to be speaking literally.
Now, second premise of the argument is okay, given this fact in the text, if Jesus meant His words, eat His Flesh and drink His Blood, to be taken metaphorically or figuratively, well then, He would’ve clarified His audience’s misunderstanding there, and there would’ve been a misunderstanding, because they’re thinking literally, and the claim is that, “Well, Jesus maybe would have been speaking figuratively with this language,” but if that were the case, there would’ve been a misunderstanding. So if Jesus was speaking figuratively, and they understood Him literally, then He would’ve clarified His audience’s misunderstanding, given Jesus being the good Teacher, given the fact that He’s clarified the misunderstanding of His apostles elsewhere. In Matthew 16, Jesus talks about 11 of the Pharisees, they thinking about the sandwiches from the Pharisaical sandwich shop, right?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Okay, yeah.
Karlo Broussard:
Elsewhere, Jesus, when He’s talking to the Samaritan woman at the well, and He tells the apostles, “I have meat to eat that you know not of,” the apostles are thinking, “Hey, man, who brought the food that we didn’t know about? Jesus ate some food,” and Jesus is saying, “No, the meat I have to eat is to do the will of my Father.” So if Jesus would’ve been speaking figuratively here about eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood, well then, He would’ve clarified the misunderstanding of both the Jews and the disciples, premise three, but Jesus didn’t clarify His audience’s misunderstanding, and so therefore, we would conclude Jesus didn’t mean His words figuratively. He was speaking literally. So that’s the common Catholic argument that’s given there.
Cy Kellett:
And it is ironclad. We can just end right there because there is no possible Protestant … Oh, wait a second. There are intelligent-
Karlo Broussard:
Well, man, we wouldn’t have a focus episode here.
Cy Kellett:
I know we have a part of an episode, but it turns out, there are, in fact, intelligent responses to that, that deserve a Catholic answer. So let’s start with the first Protestant response that you want to address. “Okay, so you, Catholic are asserting this is not metaphorical, that people took Him literally, that He never corrected them, therefore He meant it literally.” My response to that is, “What, if I’m a Protestant?”
Karlo Broussard:
Yeah. Well, the response is there’s nothing special here, that Jesus would have left them in their ignorance is nothing special because Jesus did it all the time. This is Jesus and Mo. So one biblical passage that’s appealed to by some Protestant apologists is John 2:15-21. And there, the Jews are challenging Jesus to provide a sign to authenticate His messianic authority, and Jesus responds, “Destroy this temple, and in three days, I’ll raise it up.” And as critics respond, “It’s taken us 46 years to build this temple, and You’re going to raise it up in three days?”
So notice, Cy, His critics took Him to be speaking of the physical temple, but John tells us He wasn’t talking about the physical temple. What was He talking about? He was talking about the temple of His Body.
Cy Kellett:
Okay, right. Yeah.
Karlo Broussard:
So there’s a misunderstanding going on here. They’re taking Jesus in this crass, literal way like the physical temple, that they’re standing in front of, but John says, “No, He’s talking about the temple of His Body,” so there is a misunderstanding, and guess what, Cy? There’s nothing in the text to suggest that Jesus actually corrected their misunderstanding.
Cy Kellett:
Right. That’s a good point.
Karlo Broussard:
So the argument goes, “Yeah, since Jesus didn’t correct their misplaced literal thoughts here, well then, why would we, Catholics expect that Jesus would’ve done so in John 6 if His audience were mistaken?” There’s other biblical passages in the gospels where Jesus talks about how He leaves people in their ignorance. That was the whole purpose of the parables, right? Mark 4:33-34 were told with many such parables. Jesus spoke the word to them as they were able to hear it.
He didn’t speak to them without a parable, but privately to His own disciples, He explained everything.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Karlo Broussard:
The implication being that for the non-disciples, He didn’t explain everything, right? He just spoke in the code form in the parabolic way, and left them to try to figure it out with their fuzzy understandings, but He gave clarity to the disciples in private. Matthew 13:10-11, Matthew records a conversation that Jesus had with His apostles or disciples concerning this very issue. They ask Jesus, “Why do You speak to them in parables?,” and of course, Jesus says, “To you, it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them, it has not been given.” So there’s evidence in the New Testament where Jesus actually leaves people in their misunderstandings, so why should we expect that Jesus would clarify the thoughts of His audience there in John 6? Because we’re saying that there’s thinking literally, Jesus is speaking figuratively, there’s a misunderstanding, and so therefore, He would have clarified, but that’s not necessarily the case, given this evidence. So that’s the Protestant response there.
Cy Kellett:
And do you want to give the other Protestant response first or deal with this one from a Catholic perspective? What would you like to do?
Karlo Broussard:
Okay, yeah. Let’s just stick with the response, and then now, let’s deal with the Protestant response and see how we might counter that counter, or respond to that response. So here’s one thing to note, Cy, concerning this passage of John 2:15-21. Just a few verses later, at the beginning of the next chapter in John 3:3-5, John records Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus about being born again. There, Nicodemus takes Jesus’ word, “You got to be born again in order to enter the kingdom of heaven,” in a crass, literalistic way, and Jesus actually does clarify Nicodemus’ misunderstanding, okay, and is saying, “Unless one is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God,” in response to Nicodemus saying, “How can a grown man enter his mother’s womb a second time?” Right?
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Karlo Broussard:
So notice Jesus actually does clarify there, in John 3:3-5, so the question arises, “Well, why the difference? Why doesn’t Jesus clarify the misunderstanding of the Jews in John 10, but Jesus clarifies the literalism of Nicodemus here in John 3?” Well, one plausible explanation size that the critics in John 2 were hard-hearted. Jesus knew they would, according to Matthew 26:59, seek false testimony of Jesus at His trial. Notice how John records Jesus saying, “Destroy this temple,” in John 2:19, but at Jesus’ trial in Matthew 26, they say, they accused Jesus of saying that He would destroy the temple of God, so there’s two misconceptions here.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Karlo Broussard:
Jesus was implying, “You destroy this Temple, the Body, My Body,” but at Jesus’ trial, they’re going to accuse Jesus of saying, “He’s going to be the one doing the destroying, and what is He going to destroy?” The Temple of God? So in 61 of Matthew 26, we read this fellow said, speaking of Jesus, He said, “I am able to destroy the Temple of God.” So the critics, present in John 2, were closed off to embracing the truth. Jesus knew they would bear false testimony.
They were hard-hearted, and so a plausible explanation as to why He doesn’t correct their misunderstanding is due to their hard-heartedness. Whereas for Nicodemus, he was an honest inquirer, and so Jesus clarifies his misunderstanding, especially in light of the fact that He’s talking about how to get to heaven, namely being born again of water and spirit, which we interpret as baptism. So that’s how we would answer that question, but, Cy, this actually causes a bit of a problem for us, as Catholics, right? So think about this, man. Notice how I’m saying here that well, He left the critics in ambiguity, but He explained the true meaning to a follower of His. So this doesn’t really help the Catholic in John 6 because it’s John-
Cy Kellett:
It’s critics.
Karlo Broussard:
That’s right. Go ahead.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Well, it’s critics that say, “How can this Man give us His Flesh to eat?”
Karlo Broussard:
That’s right. Yes. So notice how it’s the Jews initially who are freaking out and asking, “How can this Man give us His Flesh to eat?” So perhaps Jesus leaves the Jews in their ambiguity because in John’s narrative, the Jews was a label he used for the critics of Jesus, those who weren’t following Him, who were opposing Him, and then rejecting Him. So maybe that’s why Jesus doesn’t clarify the literalistic thoughts of the Jews, the literal thoughts of the Jews.
They were hard-hearted. They were opposed against Him, and so that would explain why Jesus doesn’t clarify, rather than the Catholic interpretation, Jesus doesn’t clarify because they meant what He meant, to literally eat His Flesh and drink His Blood. So how would we respond to that? Well, check this out, Cy. Jesus’ disciples have a hard time with the teaching as well, and Jesus doesn’t clarify their literal thoughts, because in verse 60, this is a hard saying, “Who can listen to it?”
And so they’re having a difficulty, and so the question becomes, “Well, how does Jesus respond to their difficulty? Does He ease the difficulty by offering a clarification, namely, ‘All I really mean by eating My Flesh is to believe in me,’ or does He do something else?” Well, Cy, He does something else. He does not ease the difficulty. In fact, He appeals to His ascension.
He says, “You take offense at this? What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before?” Let me ask you something, Cy. Do you think it would be difficult to see a man ascending to the air and disappear in front of your physical eyeballs?
Cy Kellett:
That would be so weird.
Karlo Broussard:
It’d be weird, right?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Karlo Broussard:
It would be horror to believe, that I actually saw that happen because of its miraculous nature. So the question becomes, “Why would Jesus appeal to something even more difficult, given its miraculous nature, in order to ease the difficulty of this teaching, of eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood?”
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Karlo Broussard:
Or to state it differently, He appeals to His ascension in order to underscore the reality of what He’s doing. Like you think this teaching is difficult. Man, just wait. Things are going to get me even more difficult. That does not suggest He’s clarifying their literal thoughts, and thereby easing the difficulty.
It suggests that He’s doubling down, enhancing, underscoring the difficulty of the teaching to eat His Flesh and drink His Blood. Think about this, Cy. Notice that the disciples, if Jesus were in any way clarifying the literal thoughts of the disciples and correcting them and saying, “Hey, guys, really, all you have to do is believe in Me. That’s all I mean by eating My Flesh …”
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Well, they already did.
Karlo Broussard:
Well then … That’s right. That’s right. The difficulty would not have remained.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Karlo Broussard:
The difficulty would’ve been settled. They would’ve said, “Oh, thank You, Jesus. Hooh, thank God.” Right?
Cy Kellett:
Exactly.
Karlo Broussard:
“You only mean to believe in You. Well, we’re already believing in You.” So there is no need to have more difficulty with this teaching, and thus, Cy, “There’s no need to leave You, Jesus,” but they actually do leave Jesus. And so from this, we conclude that Jesus is not speaking figuratively, but speaking literally, and this Protestant response to try to offer an alternative explanation as to why Jesus doesn’t clarify does not work precisely because the disciples have a hard time with the teaching as well, and rather than Jesus clarifying their thoughts and easing the difficulty, He doubles down and underscores the difficulty of the teaching, thereby suggesting He’s not leaving anybody in ignorance here. They took Him literally, it’s a hard teaching, and He underscores it and affirms it.
Cy Kellett:
It’s interesting that your reference to … His reference, but you’re pointing out His reference to the ascension really, really underlines this. Like He’s saying, “You’re going to see a miracle,” because He knows that He will be ascending. So He’s saying, “Look, what if you saw the Son of Man?” So something you can see with your eyes that actually literally will happen, but you’ll see it with your eyes. “If you see that, will you believe?” That really suggests that what He’s teaching is something really hard. Like He doesn’t want you to get out of this easily.
Karlo Broussard:
Yeah, and even, you could state that in a positive way. So initially, I was stating in a sort of a negative way, like, “Is this difficulty … Wait,” is going to even get more difficulty. But another way of seeing this, which I think is complimentary, is our Lord saying, “Hey, guys, you’re going to see My feet leave the ground. I’m going to disappear before your eyes. And if I can do that, if I can do that kind of miracle, then I can give you My Flesh to eat.”
Cy Kellett:
Right, right.
Karlo Broussard:
And so once again, the appeal to the ascension underscores the reality of the teaching to eat His Flesh and drink His Blood, not the figurative interpretation of it. There is no correlation or no gibing, you might say, right?
Cy Kellett:
No.
Karlo Broussard:
There’s no proportion between this-
Cy Kellett:
You don’t need a miracle to prove figurative language. Why would you need a miracle to affirm figurative language?
Karlo Broussard:
Good point. Yes. Absolutely. This is interesting. I’m glad you brought that up. It calls to mind an argument that Irenaeus makes in A.D. 180.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Karlo Broussard:
Whenever he’s appealing to the Last Supper. This is a little off-topic, but I thought I’d share it anyway. When Irenaeus is talking about our Lord’s words at the Last Supper, “This is My Body and this is My Blood,” Irenaeus actually appeals to Jesus’ divinity as evidence and proof for what Jesus said, an indication that Irenaeus believed Jesus to be changing the bread and wine into Jesus’ Body and Blood. The point being that you don’t need to be divine to assign bread and wine to be a sign of body and blood.
Cy Kellett:
Right. Exactly. So-
Karlo Broussard:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
Go ahead.
Karlo Broussard:
But I was just going to say, but yet Irenaeus thinks that Jesus needs to be God in order to say what He said, “This is My Body, this is My Blood,” indicating that He doesn’t believe the body and blood merely symbolizes Jesus’s Body and Blood, but Jesus is actually changing it, and that would require divine power. Similarly here, you don’t need a miracle as evidence or further justification for this figurative language that He’s using for eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood.
Cy Kellett:
But there’s another objection that Protestants raise equally strong.
Karlo Broussard:
Yes, absolutely. So normally, we, Catholics will say, “Hey,” and I already said this in passing, “The disciples left Jesus based on their understanding that this is a hard teaching, eat Flesh, drink Blood,” and they left Him for it, and Jesus never called them back, but there’s a very, very interesting response here that our good, old friend James White proposes in his online video, John 6 For Roman Catholics. What white argues is that rather than the disciples leaving Jesus based on His teaching to eat His Flesh and drink His Blood, they leave Him based on Jesus’ statement in verse 65, “No one can come to Me, unless it’s granted to him by my Father,” because verse 65, that’s what Jesus says, “No one can come to me, unless it has granted to him by My Father.” But then, in verse 66, the sentence starts in the Greek, ek toútou, which White interprets as because of this. And so White asks the question, “Because of what?”
Because of this, namely, because of the answer that Jesus gives in verse 65, the assertion of what the Father’s kingly freedom and man’s inability to come to Him. So White argues that the disciples leave Jesus in verse 66 because of what He said in verse 65, “No man comes to Me except the Father draw him.” That’s why they leave. And if that is the case, Cy, it would seem to undermine, undercut the Catholic argument here, that the disciples are leaving based upon Jesus’ teaching to eat His Flesh and drink His Blood, and He lets them go, so He must have meant it literally. So this is a fascinating objection, which I deal with in my book, Meeting the Protestant Response.
And so here’s one way in which we can begin to respond. Those two Greek words, ek toútou can mean because of this, but it can also mean after this, okay?
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Karlo Broussard:
So you got because of this, the causal translation, and after this, the temporal translation, and it can be translated either or. D. A. Carson, in his, the gospel according to John in the pillar New Testament commentary, page 303, affirms that it can be interpreted, translated as after this, in the temporal sense. So notice here, Cy, that you can’t appeal strictly to the Greek words here and automatically translate it in the causal sense, because of this, because it can mean either or. So given the ambiguity, White’s response here to the Catholic argument would fail. So more work would have to be done as to determine, “Which of these two translations is the best translation, the causal translation, because of this, or the temporal translation, after this?”
And so there are some reasons against the causal translation, because of this. So let’s talk about those briefly, okay?
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Karlo Broussard:
So think about this. This is very similar to what I said a while ago. If we were to interpret this in the causal sense, like, “Because of what I just said, guys,” and that’s why they’re leaving, “Because no one comes to the Father except through Me, except the Father draw him,” why would the disciples leave Jesus? Why would they have a hard time with that? Wouldn’t the disciples have just said, “Whew, well, thank God the Father has drawn us to You, Jesus, because we already believe in You.” Right?
Cy Kellett:
Oh, right. Right. Why-
Karlo Broussard:
Yeah, it doesn’t make sense that they would leave Jesus because Jesus just said, “Hey, you can’t come to Me unless the Father draws you.” Why would they leave Him for that, because they would’ve thought to themselves, “Well, thank God, the Father has drawn us to You, Jesus, because I’m already believing in You”?
Cy Kellett:
“Yeah, here I am. I’m standing right here.” Yeah, I got you. Okay.
Karlo Broussard:
Absolutely. So for that reason, the causal translation or because of this doesn’t make sense. Secondly, this is not the first time Jesus says this, Cy. Jesus actually gives this very teaching in verse 44, right before He starts talking about eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood, and giving it for the life of the world. So His whole teaching about eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood is sandwiched in between these two bookends, “No one comes to Me except the Father draw him,” in verse 44, “No one comes to me except the Father draw him,” in verse 65.
And here’s the key, Cy, no one takes offense at what Jesus says in verse 44. When Jesus says that in verse 44, “No one comes to me except my father draw him,” nobody takes offense at that. So why would they all of a sudden take offense at it in 65 and leave Him for it? That doesn’t make sense. The only thing that the people, His audience takes offense at after He says, “No one comes to Me except the Father draw him,” is when He starts identifying the bread of heaven as His Flesh for the life of the world.
So you would think that if the disciples were leaving Jesus because of what Jesus is saying, “No one can come to Me except the Father draw him,” like White is suggesting, then they would’ve been offended with it in verse 44, but they weren’t offended with it in verse 44, and so therefore, this causal translation doesn’t make sense. And finally, related to the previous answer, there’s no defense on Jesus’ part of the statement in verse 44. When Jesus says, “No one comes to Me except the Father draw him,” there’s no negative response, and consequently, Jesus is not defending Himself, but whenever the Jews and the disciples get riled up about eating His Flesh, well then, Jesus starts defending Himself rather than clarifying. He’s affirming it like, “Yeah, you got to believe this stuff. This is real stuff.”
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Karlo Broussard:
And so for these reasons, I do not think the causal translation is the best translation. I do not think we should translate ek toútou because of this, rather, we should translate it after this in the temporal sense. That is to say, John is recording the sequence of events that took place, they struggled, Jesus affirmed, the disciples struggled, Jesus affirmed, and they got up and walked away. That’s what John is doing, giving a temporal sequence of events. Finally, Cy, even if for argument’s sake, we go with this causal translation, because of this, well, this doesn’t necessarily have to refer to the thing Jesus said in verse 65. It could also refer to the entirety of the previous discussion.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Yeah.
Karlo Broussard:
And that would make sense, because they were struggling with this teaching, to eat His Flesh and drinking His Blood, and so it would make sense if John were to say, “Because of this,” that is because of everything that Jesus said that, they were struggling with, which is evident from the text, “They got up, walked away, and went no more with Him.” So reasons against the causal translation, because of this, and even if for argument’s sake, we go with the causal translation, the Catholic interpretation still fits. So the bottom line is that as fun and as good and as insightful as White’s objection is to our Catholic argument here, ultimately, I don’t think it succeeds.
Cy Kellett:
And so that’s why you say confidently that Catholics aren’t wrong about John 6, that what is discussed there, what Jesus is explaining there and offering there is the truth about the Eucharist and that the Eucharist is literally His Flesh and Blood.
Karlo Broussard:
Yes. So I might have to nuance that a little bit to be fair here, and intellectually honest. So the title is like Why Catholics Aren’t Wrong About John 6. But at least here, in what we’ve spoken of so far, we would have to specify that or nuance it and say, “At least these aren’t reasons why Catholics are wrong about John 6,” because there are other Protestant responses to our argument that I consider in my book, and maybe further responses that Protestants might think of in the future that I don’t cover in my book, but at least these reasons would not be reasons why Catholics are wrong about John 6.
Cy Kellett:
Thank you, Karlo. I enjoyed that very much.
Karlo Broussard:
All right, Cy. Well, thank you, buddy.
Cy Kellett:
Hey, if you want to comment on that or anything else that we do here, you can send it, your comments, suggestions for future shows, complaints, questions, whatever to focus@catholic.com. That’s our email address, focus@catholic.com. You can catch Karlo’s Sunday Catholic Word podcast each Thursday. A new episode drops, and you can find it at sundaycatholicword.com. Is that right? Did I get it right, sundaycatholicword.com?
Karlo Broussard:
That is correct. Yes.
Cy Kellett:
Okay, ’cause, you know, I’m a 50/50 on websites. So sundaycatholicword.com. That does it for us. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. We’ll see you next time, God willing, right here on Catholic Answers Focus.