Endocannibalism in Sacrament Meeting

Cannibalism, it seems to me, is one of the unspoken issues that lurks beneath all Mormon sacrament meetings. The earliest Christians, of course, were accused of ritual cannibalism and it is one the reasons initially given by Roman authorities to justify their persecution. And honestly, who can blame the Roman officials for a bit of confusion on this point. Consider this passage from the Gospel of John, where Jesus says:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. (John 6:53-55)

The sacrament trades on at least two different sets of images. The first set of images are those associated with the Passover. The Passover, of course, is the ritual meal in which Jews re-enact their flight from captivity under Pharaoh to freedom under God. The sacrament translates this into the context of Christ’s atonement and the bread and the wine (water) now become a ritual meal that recapitulates our flight from the slavery of sin and death to the freedom of redemption and resurrection through the passion of Christ. The second set of symbols is considerably bloodier. Here we look on the bread and wine (water) as flesh and blood. Christ becomes the a propitiating sacrifice, either of the paschal lamb, slain so that its blood would fend off the angel of death, or else as the scapegoat, laden with the sins of the community and driven into the wilderness on the Day of Atonement. Again, the imagery is of atonement, freedom from death and sin.

These two sets of images, however, carefully segregate the sacrament as meal from the sacrament as flesh and blood. When we think of the sacrament as a new Passover, we needn’t think of eating flesh and blood. When we think of the sacrament as the flesh and blood of the fallen lamb, we needn’t think about eating it, unless we push the paschal lamb imagery farther than we generally do. In other words, the traditional set of symbols elides over the literalism of John and thus avoids an obvious fact: the sacrament is a form of ritual cannibalism.

Anthropologists differentiate three kinds of cannibalism. First, there is starvation cannibalism, where people eat the dead to survive. This form is actually fairly rare and is confined to extreme situations like the Donner party trapped in the high Sierras or the siege of Leningrad. Outside of H.G. Wells stories, however, human beings by and large do not rely on the flesh of other human beings for primary nourishment. Rather, cannibalism is almost always freighted with ritual and religious significance. This ritual cannibalism is divided between exocannibalism and endocannibalism.

Exocannibalism refers to eating the flesh of those outside of one’s own social group. Generally speaking, exocannibalism is associated with victory and domination. For example, the Maori tradition of cannibalism takes this form. Maori warriors would eat the flesh of their fallen foes as an ultimate symbol superiority. The basic message was, “I am bigger, badder, and stronger than you, because I am alive and you are dead. I am eating, and you are the one being eaten.” This sort of cannibalism, of course, shows up in western sources as well. In Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice, anguished at the gross insult delivered her cousin by a man, laments the limits placed on her by sex. “Were I a man,” she cries, “I would eat his heart in the marketplace!” Classic exocannibalism.

Endocannibalism, refers to eating the flesh of those who are inside of one’s own social group, generally family members or ancestors. For example, in one moderately widespread ritual, the bodies of family members are buried and allowed to decompose for some time. The remains are then exhumed, and the bones are scraped clean of any remaining flesh. These bones are then ground into a powder (sometimes after first being burned) that is then mixed with water and drunk. As opposed to the domination meaning of exocannibalism, the idea behind this kind of meal is that it allows the participants to take upon them the power and force of their dead ancestors. This idea also shows up to a certain extent in exocannibalism as eating the flesh of a fallen enemy is thought to transfer his courage and virility to the victorious warrior.

Mormonism narrows in some sense the gulf between man and god. We become members of the same species and the same family. We, along with Christ, are sons and daughters of God in a very literal sense. In this context, the sacrament becomes a kind of endocannibalism. By eating — if only in ritual form — the flesh and blood of Christ, our fallen loved one, we take upon ourselves some of his power and force. This infusion of his concentrated divinity into us becomes part of the atonement. By assimilating his flesh into our flesh, he becomes one with us and we take his power into us for the upward path toward exaltation.

Our sacrament prayers back away from the simple literalism of John and the more metaphysically complicated gyrations of transubstantiation. We eat only in remembrance of the flesh and blood of Christ. Never the less, we do eat, and lurking below the surface of our ritual lies a cannibalism that is not without its own spiritual logic.

163 comments for “Endocannibalism in Sacrament Meeting

  1. Nate,

    How exactly is this analysis affected by transubstantiation? Are you saying that, since Mormons are not really transubstantiationists, we are not really being cannibals — but that, for example, Cathlolics are?

  2. Kaimi: It seems to me that all Christians (even the non-Mormon ones, if you can really call them Christian) have a form of ritual cannibalism at the core of their liturgy. Transubstantion simply makes the ritual more literal, although it requires a complex Aristotilean metaphysics to make sense.

  3. What possible advantage do we get out of thinking of the sacrament as ritual cannibalism? Besides the frisson of being one of the anthropologically-correct cool kids, who are to wordly-wise to have the prejudices and icky associations that the less fearless do.

    Maybe we can now start referring to temple marriage as a mating ritual, or belief in the afterlife as ‘going to the magic palace in the sky.’

    In other words, I don’t think that thinking about our faith in anthropological terms, especially ones with evil associations, does any good unless it gives us some new understanding. Here it doesn’t.

    As far as I can tell, the insight of the comparison is this: “This infusion of his concentrated divinity into us becomes part of the atonement. By assimilating his flesh into our flesh, he becomes one with us and we take his power into us for the upward path toward exaltation.” But this is nothing new. No one would have caviled if it had simply been stated flat out.

  4. Adam, don’t be a poo-pooher. Nate’s post is interesting, and I believe the tie to cannibalism is an essential one in Christianity. It has always been fascinating to me that our most basic ritual is tied to the most vile act in society, and I’ve often wondered why Christ chose to express the atonement in those terms.

  5. Steve: perhaps it has to do more with the Adversary tempting/creating cannabilism as an unholy mockery of the Atonement? Given our knowledge of the pre-mortal existence, and creation of the plan pre-this existence, my guess is that the atonement, sacrament, etc. were all pre-planned long before cannabilism was even thought of.

  6. Adam: You seem to be a testy mood today. I actually think that anthropology is a very useful way of thinking about rituals and their meaning. The point of the exercise is not that people should think that I am cool and worldly. (Although, for the record, I would like to point out that I am cool.) Rather, the point is to try to unearth the meaning of the symbols that we have. As for cannibalism, I didn’t bring up the issue. Christ did. The imagery in John is about as explicit as it can possibly be.

  7. You may be cool, but I’m testily cool.

    “I actually think that anthropology is a very useful way of thinking about rituals and their meaning.”

    So do I. But I don’t see that it’s been very useful the way its done here. What has our excursion through anthropology taught us that we didn’t know already?

    “As for cannibalism, I didn’t bring up the issue. Christ did. The imagery in John is about as explicit as it can possibly be. ”

    This is my point. We already knew that we were ingesting Christ. There’s nothing subtle about this. John says it, our prayers say it, etc. So all we’ve done in this post is add the label ‘cannibalism.’ I’m suggesting that adding the label ‘cannibalism’ sheds little additional light.

  8. Adam: Adding the label “cannibalism” allows us, as Nate has done, to compare our ritual to other rituals and to use them to help us think about the meanings ours might have. The difference between endocannibalism and exocannibalism is useful, and making it may help us understand better understand what we are doing. Thinking about something from a different perspective than our usual one almost always sheds light on it.

    Heather and I’ve previously established (##16, 17) that Nate is not cool.

  9. You’re arguing the general point, Jim F., but I already agree that anthropology can be useful, that looking at things from a different perspective can be good, etc.

  10. Adam: You say (#9), “adding the label ‘cannibalism’ sheds little additional light.”

    I say (#10), “Yes, it does.”

    Your response (#11): You’re arguing the general point, with which I agree, but not the specific point.

    But I didn’t argue only the general point that anthropology can be useful. I argued for the helpfulness of specific claims that Nate made. So I don’t know what to make of your response.

  11. I misunderstood you, Jim F. So let me revise the dialogue.

    “Adam G.: “adding the label ‘cannibalism’ sheds little additional light.”

    Jim F.: “Yes, it does.”

    Adam G.: “How?”

  12. Adam: As I said, I find the endocannibalism/exocannibalism distinction and Nate’s discussion of it useful because it helps me think about the power that I take on by eating the flesh and blood of Christ.

    Though Nate didn’t make the point, and it isn’t an anthropological point, I think it is useful to remind ourselves of Jesus’s portrayal of the Sacrament as cannibalistic because that portrayal ought to remind us the horror required to overcome our estrangement from God.

  13. Nate, anthropologists are far too gullible when it comes to believing cannibalism stories. Most of it is either tribal macho bravado or propaganda about the tribe over in the next valley. In fact, I’ve had an anthropologist tell me he has never seen a single well-documented instance of actual cannibalism (as opposed to the tales that circulate in villages and make their way into ethnographic reports). But hey, cannibalism sure livens up an otherwise dull anthropology narrative, doesn’t it? On the gullibility of anthropologists, reflect on the present low evaluation of Margaret Mead’s reliance on the stories she heard while a young researcher in Samoa.

    I see no actual connection between cannibalism and the sacrament. Interestingly, the Book of Mormon recounts episodes of cannibalism (Moroni 9:7-8), which might be a nice way to bring it up if you decide to throw cannibalism into your next talk on the sacrament.

  14. Is it possible we are dissecting, with anthropological lancets and crude semantics, what is essentially sacramental poetry? Poetry in its holiest sense, exquisite images to apprehend the nearness of God. Then the word “cannibalism”, and the repulsive depiction it entails, is inappropriate. I find it disturbing to explore such path, but will respect those who think otherwise.

  15. Dave: My point really has nothing to do with whether or not people do or do not actually eat people. The point is about the meaning that we draw from cannibalism stories not the fact of whether or not people are eaten.

    Adam: The insight does not come from labelling eating the flesh as cannibalism. The insight comes from comparing our ritual flesh eating with other ritual flesh eating. You have obviously had a greater insight into the sacrament your whole life than I have had. I confess that the image of eating the blood and flesh of Christ has always struck me as strange and a little disturbing. I like the passover/sacrifice imagery, but it seems to ignore a key fact. (In the passover imagery the bread becomes the unleaven bread, rather than flesh.) Seeing Christ’s flesh as the flesh of the paschal lamb doesn’t seem to make sense of the fact that Christ insists in John that we gain eternal life (and have it in us) by eating him. Life was provided by the blood of the paschal lamb, not be eating it. Reading about endocannibalism let a missing piece click into place for me. Be patient with me as I catch up.

    And I insist that I am cool. Heather and I have already had some private chats about her denial of my hippness. I am waaaay hip.

  16. “I think it is useful to remind ourselves of Jesus’s portrayal of the Sacrament as cannibalistic because that portrayal ought to remind us the horror required to overcome our estrangement from God.”

    That will stay with me for a while. I think I get the point of it, and indeed it is a piercing one, but a little elaboration would be welcome.

  17. Regardless of what John has to say on the subject, the phrase “that they may do it in remembrance” kind of takes the Sacrament out of the whole cannibalism thing for me. Your mileage may vary, however.

  18. ““I think it is useful to remind ourselves of Jesus’s portrayal of the Sacrament as cannibalistic because that portrayal ought to remind us the horror required to overcome our estrangement from God.”

    This is an area where the cannibalism metaphor misleads. We are meant to understand the atonement as horrible, but not the sacrament, I think. The sacrament is the fruits of the horrors of the atonement, but not itself horrible. I see no evidence in scripture or prophecy that we are meant to think of the nastiness of eating flesh and blood while we take the sacrament in addition to thinking of the nastiness of Christ nailed to the tree.

  19. Nate, I’m relieved you see the image as “strange and a little disturbing.” I wasn’t sure there at first. But I think you’re a little glib dismissing my point that cannibalism stories are just stories. A ritual or story that draws its symbolic bite from echoes of prior narratives or stories works differently than a ritual or story that hearkens back to actual prior practices or events. One is just repackaging; the other is commemoration of some sort.

  20. Wilfried (#16): I think you are right that the Sacrament is better understood as a kind of poetry than in anthropological terms. However, even as poetry, it is graphic, though I think we often are able to overlook that gruesomeness (and I certainly don’t think we ought to dwell on it, making the ordinance macabre).

    Adam (#19): I see no evidence in scripture or prophecy that we are meant to think of the nastiness of eating flesh and blood while we take the sacrament

    How about John 6:53-55: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed”? If we are asked to remember his flesh and blood, and he has himself in scripture identified that remembrance with eating, I don’t see how you can say this.

    John (#20): I don’t see why memorializing the act of eating Christ’s flesh and blood (which is what the Sacrament prayers specifically we say we are doing, especially in light, not of what John says, but of what he reports Jesus saying about the first Sacrament rite) takes the Sacrament out of the realm of cannibalism.

    Kingsley (#19): I don’t have a great deal more to say. As I said to Wilfried, there is a fine line here between recognizing the horror of the suffering in the Garden and on the cross, a suffering to which I contributed, and turning the Christian message into something macabre. I don’t want to cross that line. But Jesus’s description of the Sacrament in John, and our explicit remembrance of that description in the Sacrament prayers serve–among other things (as Nate has noted)–to remind me of my part in Christ’s suffering. Part of what I do in the ritual is to remember my part by repeating it and, at exactly the same time, discover that Christ’s response to my part is to feed me, to nourish my soul and take away my guilt.

  21. For me a beauty of the Sacrament is the way in which both my guilt and my absolution are portrayed in the bread and water of the ritual.

  22. Jim F.: Thank you, that’s a beautiful way of putting it. I had not thought of it that way before.

  23. Lyle, Jesus said this is my body, this is my blood, eat it, drink it. He gave us the symbolism, not Satan.

  24. You misunderstand me, Jim F. Of course we are to think of Christ’s flesh and blood while taking the sacrament. As John says. And we are to think of the horror of his giving his flesh and blood for our sakes. But I see no evidence that we are to focus on the *horror of eating* human flesh and blood, which is what the cannibalism metaphor tends to do. Thinking of the sacrament as cannibalism improperly shifts the horror from what Christ did in the flesh (the atonement) to what we are doing (the sacrament).

  25. Adam: What do you see the meaning of John 6:53-55 as being? In particular, why does Christ use such literal imagery regarding the consumption of his flesh? Christ doesn’t command that we simply remember his flesh and blood suffering. He commands that we eat his body and his blood. This is not some worldly conspiracy or attempted on my part to become cool by asking anthropological questions. It is a very explicit passage of cannonized scripture. What do you make of it? More to the point, how is it possible to even think about it without simultaneously thinking about cannibalism, ie the eating of human flesh. The issue is one raised by the scriptures, not by me.

  26. I disagree, Nate. Wilfried Decoo has it exactly right that we should think of this as poetry.

    So, when I read that ‘my love is lak a red, red rose’ I don’t think to myself that my love has aphids or can’t get pregnant unless bees crawl over her or needs a healthy sprinkling of manure spring and fall. Imaginatively the simile invokes a bright beauty, a scent, and a softness, and thats it.

    When Christ broke bread and gave it to his apostles and said, ‘take, eat, this is my body,’ I don’t think he was asking his apostles to imaginatively associate eating the bread with, say, the smell of a butchered manflesh sizzling on the barbecue. He was imaginatively wanting them to think of him as becoming a part of them, even on the physical level.

  27. While I can’t add anything more eloquent than what Jim’s already said, it seems to me that “the cannibalism metaphor” is a difficult one, but one put forth by Christ himself and one we must deal with and love. Now, if Adam doesn’t like some of the implications of that metaphor and views them as improper, he’s more than welcome to ignore them, but as Nate said, it’s raised by the scriptures, not by anthropology or some other source. Nate’s reference to anthropological examples of different kinds of cannibalism is instructive in the way it helps to frame Christ’s metaphor in a relative context.

    That said, Adam is right that maybe we shouldn’t obsess over possible recipies for human flesh or dwell on the nastier parts of eating humans. But I think that’s easily done, for the most part. The real challenge as I see it is sounding out the implications of why Christ has linked one of our most sacred acts in one of the most disturbing.

  28. Nate, I hate to admit it, but I’m with Adam on this one. I think your preference for theory over metaphor and narrative has run away with you (not to mention your delight in catchy titles and first lines). It’s a little harder to figure out what has happened to Jim F. :)

  29. p.s. for the sticklers: Adam’s example in no. 30 is a simile, and he is therefore comparing apples to oranges (to use a metaphor).

  30. I think the analogy is fresh by the fact that it redirects our attention to the literal component — eating his flesh — that Christ’s original metaphor depends on. Doesn’t the (poetic) power of the original metaphor depend on what moden sensibilities would like to exclude in this instance? Basically Jim F.’s point but it’s worth repeating, since Christ authorizes the estranging comparison himself. What else could he have had in mind, if not some cannibalistic practice?

  31. “Nate, I hate to admit it, but I’m with Adam on this one”

    I don’t get no respect…

  32. Jim! You sort of made a joke!

    I agree with your last comment and Wilfried’s.

    I was watching BYU TV the other day and they were discussing the sacrament and suggested that we substitute “I” and “me” rather than “we.” I did that this Sunday and it was more meaningful.

  33. Cannibalism is not the only unappetizing and forbidden practice alluded to by the sacrament. What about human sacrifice? Part of the message of the Old Testament is the special revulsion one should feel about that practice, and yet that revuslion is part of the context that makes the atonement meaningful.

    Of course, this would not be the first example of contention about what the meaning of ‘is’ is in hoc est corpus meum.

  34. Adam: Sure it’s poetry, but your version lacks teeth. If you come away with visions of a day at the barby then I think you’ve missed Christ’s point that if not for his atonement we’d all be skewered on one another’s barbecues ala Moroni 9:8.

  35. “He was imaginatively wanting them to think of him as becoming a part of them, even on the physical level.”

    Adam: I actually agree with this, but I am affraid — theoretical, unpoetic dolt that I am — I didn’t get this until I thought about cannibalism. In my faithless and worldly way, I had been thinking about the sacrament in terms of unleavened bread, the paschal lamb, and the scapegoat, since those seem to be the other textual images invoked in the sacrament. No doubt if I had a more sensitive and poetic soul, I could have intuited. Instead, I bit the bullet, decided that John 6 employeed the imagery of eating flesh and blood, looked up “cannibalism” in the Encyclopedia of Religion, found the discussion of endocannibalism, and decided that the eating the flesh and blood of Christ is an image meant to invoke our taking into us Christ’s power and divinity. Next time, however, I will avoid thinking and research, dismiss my textual questions by saying “It is all poetry,” and wait for the intuitive insight to strike me.

    It seems to me that you simply object to the imagery involved in the intellectual tools that I tried to use in my interpretation. Don’t worry, just think of it as poetry…

  36. FWIW, medieval mystics thought a lot about the literal eating of Christ’s flesh (even before it became a doctrinal bone of contention at the Reformation) and tied the idea to the liturgical cycles of fasting and feasting. Some of that has made its way into our own hymnody. The lyric of the hymn “Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee,” adapted from Bernard of Clairvaux’s magnificent text, reads,

    Jesus, the very thought of thee
    With sweetness fills my breast.
    But sweeter still thy face to see,
    And in thy presence rest.

    The embedded metaphor of sweetness, tasting, filling, and eating implicitly compares thinking about Christ to the eating of Christ’s sweet flesh.

    Incidentally, these four lines bring me to tears every time I sing them.

  37. Adam (#30): When I read that ?my love is lak a red, red rose? I don?t think to myself that my love has aphids or can?t get pregnant unless bees crawl over her or needs a healthy sprinkling of manure spring and fall.

    Granted, it is a mistake to take a metaphor too far. But it is difficult for me to see how I take the metaphor of eating flesh too far by thinking of eating flesh. Indeed, it seems to me that if I never think of eating flesh, then I have ignored the metaphor; I’m not doing what Jesus commanded his disciples (and, therefore, presumably also us) to do. If I read that my love is like a red, red rose, surely there is some quality, set of qualities, or associations of the rose that is relevant.

    Annegb (#37): Oops. I’ll have to be more careful in the future.

    Kristine (#32): What has happened to me is that my preference for metaphor and narrative over theory has run away with me. (On the other hand, I can recommend a very good book on the theory of metaphor, Paul Ricoeur’s The Rule of Metaphor.)

    Rosalynde (#41): Thanks for that reminder. Bernard’s text is a large part of what make that hymn one of my favorites.

  38. Well, Nate Oman, if taking a detour through cannibalism and anthropophagic practices helps you understand, detour on. Honey was found in the rotting corpse of a lion, after all, and beauty comes from ashes.

  39. The symbolism and poetry alluded to by Adam, Wilfried and others is right on. Signifcant portions of the Christ’s teachings are ensconced in parables and are not to be taken literally; this, I believe, being one of them.

    Christ also said he is the bread of life. That doesn’t mean I’m supposed to think of him as a yeast roll that has sprouted legs. He is also referred to as a root or as a stem. But to think of him as a literal oleander is stretching it a bit.

    I’d suggest the bread and water are merely symbols to remind us and have us reflect on the atonement rather than suggest to us that, at the very core, we should be cannibals.

    I recognize you are not saying this, but it seems you are going with an especially literal meaning of the verses you read rather than looking at the symbolism. Somehow we need to renew our covenants and be reminded of his flesh and blood. Eating denotes nourishment and is something we do daily. Christ, the bread of life, used this same mechanism as a means to remind us of our need for spiritual nourishment. Again, in my opinion, not to teach us to embrace the “higher-law” of cannibalism.

  40. Jim,

    In thinking about your response to Kingsley (comment #24), I find myself asking a few questions–

    When you speak of “your part” in the Savior’s suffering are you infering that you (we) are responsible for His suffering and ultimate death? And, is the partaking of His flesh and blood a reminder to us that He perished because of something we have done and that the “something” is represented by the act of eating and drinking His flesh and blood?

    I think, in order (for me) to make sense of your approach to the symbolism one has to first tackle the issue of our involvement in His suffering. And so, further questions arise. Am I responsible for the Savior’s suffering if He was completely free to choose whether or not He would suffer for me? And moreover, can I claim any responsiblity for that suffering if I had no power in and of myself to transfer any of my guilt to Him which seems to be the cause of His suffering?

    I don’t have any clear answers to these questions at this point (though I do have some ideas). But for now I am at least willing to accept the idea that when we take the bread and water we are reminded that the Savior’s death is an act of willing self-sacrifice and that He invites us to come and eat of His body and drink of His blood in order that we may not perish from want of hunger or thirst; and that, inasmuch as we must eat and drink in order to live, His flesh and blood, His very peron, indeed, He, Himself becomes the essence of the life He offers us.

  41. I’ve been disturbed by the whole cannibalism metaphor myself many times in sacrament. It is simply wierd to me. I once read a book by Stephen Moore called God’s Gym. In it Moore took the imagery of the crucifixion as a divine model of violence and abuse. I know that doesn’t directly address endocannibalism, but it’s another way some people can twist the traditional view of the gospel into a gory, gruesome one.

    Here’s a few passages:
    “What the transformational interpretation of the crucifixion attempts to exclude, however, is the issue of power, an issue all too close to the surface in the punitive interpretaion, the power of one person over the body of another, a power never more evident than in the relationship of the torturer to the victim—and never more distrubing, perhaps, than when the torturer is God and the victim his Son” (24).
    …..
    “If what I have been arguing about the Bible is indeed the case—that its God is a singularly pure projection of the will to power—then the biblical critic might have no choice but to clutch his or her scalpel defensively, to brindish it threatenigly, as the hypermasculine hulk that is the biblical God lumbers across the examining room, an imperious frown furrowing his perfectly handsome features, and a pair of handcuffs dangling ominously from his weight-lifting belt, which is cinched around his bloodstained butcher’s apron, from the pocket of which a blindfold protrudes. ‘You do not believe because you have seen me,’ he intones. ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and therefore believe’ ” (140).

    I think he overstated the ideas of religious violence, but it is an interesting perspective.

  42. Jack (#46): The syllogism is straightforward.

    1. Christ suffered for the sins of the world.
    2. I have contributed to the sins of the world.
    3. So, I am partly responsible for his suffering.

    I don’t see why his freedom to choose to suffer would negate my responsibilty for that suffering. He could only choose it if we sin, so we cannot say “I have no responsibility for the suffering you’ve chosen” when he has chosen that suffering by accepting what we have created in order to relieve us of its burden. His grace and charity doesn’t negate my responsibility.

    So yes, I think that the symbolic eating of his flesh and blood is double-edged: (1) I am responsible for his suffering, and that responsibility condemns me to spiritual death; (2) he has provided the sustanence that saves me from that death.

    tjohnson: It has been a while since I read Moore’s book and I didn’t give it close attention when I did. But my problem with Moore is that he responds to the cultural caricature of God we find around us, often repeated in academic circles, but he doesn’t respond to the God we actually find in the Bible and other scripture.

  43. This is perversion. It is also trifling with that which is sacred.

    Isn’t the spiritual impropriety of this post crystal clear?

  44. I disagree, Spencer. On the very contrary I have combed through 49 comments on the meaning (literal, symbolic, anthrophological, and poetic) of the Sacrament. I have found myself reflecting on different aspects of the ordinance and allowed my mind and heart to embrace the Atonement in significant ways. I may not agree with all of the assertions made in this thread, but I have certainly learned from them.

  45. Jim,

    I think agency makes all the difference–not only the Savior’s agency but ours as well. Your syllogy presupposes that at some point we must have made an agreement with the Savior that He would suffer for us should we fall into sin, thereby causing us to bear some of the responsibility for His suffering.

    I suspect that this may be true, though I don’t know how to justify it logically. The reason being, as mortals (and a little beyond IMO) we are in a position where we have to make a choice whether or not to follow Christ. And, those who choose not to follow Christ will suffer even as He suffered (according to Section 19). If I am to be completely free in that choice–whether to accept His suffering or endure it myself–then His suffering must be viewed as a gift which I am free to take or leave. And If I am free to take it or leave it, then by leaving it I am rejecting His suffering. I’m saying, “I’m not asking you to do that for me” (as terribly sad as that may be). And if I’m not asking Him to suffer for me, then He is making His own decision to suffer and is, therefore, responsible for the suffering.

    Conversely, If I am to have complete freedom in accepting the Savior’s suffering then I must know that I bear no responsibility for *making* Him suffer. I must know that His suffering for me was not forced upon Him in anyway by my choices. It is only in knowing that He suffered by virtue of excercising His own will to do so that we may be assured of His perfect love for us. And with the understanding that He loves us perfectly we are able to place our trust in Him.

  46. I just realized that I used the word “syllogy” which really isn’t a word. That should be “syllogism”. Not that it makes my comment anymore coherent.

  47. I’ve been waiting for someone to mention Rene Girard in this connection, but since no one has (or have I missed it?), I suppose it’s left to me to suggest that Girard’s anthropological-literary investigations, starting with VIOLENCE AND THE SACRED (including fascinating readings of Sophocles, for example) are indispensible to any reflection on the meaning of the atonement as the “great and last sacrifice.” The endo/exo distinction may not quite suffice, since Girard shows that the whole secret of the meaning and social function of sacrifice is the peculiar status of the scapegoat as both savior and enemy. I’m far from knowing how to connect all the dots in this puzzle, but Girard has to be on to something that would help us come to terms with the central teaching of Christianity in relation to the deepest layers of our humanity. Now I invite someone with more background in Girard to step up and help us.

  48. I’m afraid I can’t help with Girard, but I can help with someone who knows and has made use of Girard: Charles Taylor. In his book A Catholic Modernity?, Talyor discusses “modernity” as a range of views, many of which involve a denial of or a papering over the way in which the force of violence in our lives actually underlines the sacred or transcendent. (An Augustinian point, if you think about, with his connection between war and order.) The divine is made weak in the contemporary world–“religion remains only very imperfectly oriented to the beyond,” is how Taylor puts it–because violence is now located solely in the head (chemical imbalance!) or the environment, and hence its power to turn us towards God is lost. Taylor doesn’t pursue the point, but, by bringing up Girard in this context, he is clearly suggesting that the only sort of polity capable of negotiating the modern world to the fullest is one which nontheless holds to sacralizing, sacrificial core; otherwise, the weight of violence is turned antihuman, casual, and nihilistic. A theology of communion which lacked the kind of bloodiness which “cannibalism” suggests is emblematic of this distortion, not a corrective to it.

  49. Jack (#52): Your syllogism presupposes that at some point we must have made an agreement with the Savior that He would suffer for us should we fall into sin, thereby causing us to bear some of the responsibility for His suffering.

    I don’t see why this presupposition is necessary to what I said. As you say, there may or may not have been such an agreement. I don’t know much about what happened in the pre-existence. But if Christ takes suffering on himself to atone for my sins, then I am responsible for his suffering. Were it not for my sins, he would not have suffered. That seems clear.

    Ralph (#56): It has been too long since I spent much time with Girard’s work, so I can’t say even as much as you did, but I think you’re right that he offers us material for thinking about these issues and that his material is likely to be more helpful in the long run than the anthropological stuff.

    Russell Arben Fox: Thanks for bringing Taylor into this discussion. To my mind he is one of the English-speaking world’s most important contemporary thinkers. And I agree with you that the desire to locate the meaning of the Sacrament “only in the head” is a weakening of religion. Indeed, that weaking is at the heart of the problem that religion faces in the contemporary world.

  50. Jim F. wrote: I don’t see why this presupposition is necessary to what I said. As you say, there may or may not have been such an agreement. I don’t know much about what happened in the pre-existence. But if Christ takes suffering on himself to atone for my sins, then I am responsible for his suffering. Were it not for my sins, he would not have suffered. That seems clear.

    I’m not sure that you could get a legal causation case established on this basis without at least the (perhaps implied) additional assertion that your sins generate suffering that must be allocated either to you or to someone else. Did you intend to imply that assertion? I could envision (dimly) conceptions of the atonement that do not require the accounting of particular and disparate quanta of suffering.

  51. There is a tort for people who recklessly put themselves in danger, if people who come to their rescue are also put in danger.

    It seems a strange account of causation to say that any element of free will whatsoever on someone else’s part ends my responsibility.

  52. Greenfrog (#58): Though law may help us think about issues of responsibility, I don’t think that the absence of a certain notion of responsibility in the law means that notion of responsibility is meaningless. I don’t think the question of legal causation is relevant here.

    I also don’t intend the assertion you adduce. I intend only two: “I sinned” and “Christ has taken my sins on himself, suffering for them.” That doesn’t require particular and disparate quanta of suffering, nor does it require an assumption about a causal relation between my sin and his suffering. But it nevertheless makes sense to understand the two assertions together as implying that I am responsible for his suffering: “I have a responsibility for X” need not mean “I caused X.”

  53. The problem I have with saying or emphasizing that we are “responsible” for Christ’s suffering (whether it is technically or legally true or not) is that it may make some of us feel guilty (or even ashamed) for calling upon the atonement. And my understanding of the atonement is that it is intended to relieve us from guilt or shame, among other things.

    Rather than focusing on my “responsibility”/”guilt” for Jesus’ suffering during the sacrament, I prefer to think of my gratitude that he “would descend from His throne divine to rescue a soul so rebellious and proud . . . that for me a sinner he suffered and bled and died.”

    To some, it may seem a difference without a distinction, but for me dwelling on my “responsibility” for His suffering creates different fellings in my heart than does pondering on my gratitude, and my amazement, for His sacrifice for me (and all His children).

  54. “Spencer H. – Doth this offend you? Comment by Kingsley — 7/15/2005 : 3:06 am”

    Yes, I am offended by this pornography. I suggest in sincerity that those of you who think you might be doing yourself and others some sort of intellectual service should take a moment to consider the possibility that you could be becoming spiritual pornographers, rather than intellectuals.

    Is the idea discussed on this post supposed to be an original observation? It isn’t. But it is foolish and prideful to consider that a new idea to you must be new to others, and necassarily for your or their benefit.

    I strongly advise those of you who read this to refrain from trifling with the sacrament in this manner. It is beneath all of us. Those of you who believe you are benefiting from it fail to recognize far more beneficial sources of growth and knowledge.

    If you are offended by my remarks, you need to recalibrate. This discussion is pornography. If you continue to promote it, you become pornographers and perverters of sacred things and are in danger of consequences of your own doing.

  55. D&C 63:64 “Remember that that which cometh from above is sacred, and must be spoken with care, and by constraint of the Spirit; and in this there is no condemnation, and ye receive the Spirit through prayer; wherefore, without this there remaineth condemnation.”

    Can it be clearer on the need for caution on how we speak about sacred things?

    If you have any doubt how dangerous it is to start meddling with sacred things, and in pitting your mind against the Lord’s, consider Mormon’s words to Moroni concerning a dangerous idea which had perverted that which was sacred: “Moroni 8:14 Behold I say unto you, that he that supposeth that little children need baptism is in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity; for he hath neither faith, hope, nor charity; wherefore, should he be cut off while in the thought, he must go down to hell.”

    I should emphasize this statement concerning the danger of perverse thinking: “wherefore, should he be cut off while in the thought, he must go down to hell.”

    Let us be much more careful in how lightly we throw around ideas concerning these sacred things. While there are some of you who think you are being benefited, do you fail to consider those who could be hurt by such light and strange treatment of such a sacred thing?

  56. Spencer H. —

    Your prooftexts are unconvincing, as you have not shown us how they are significant to this discussion. That you find it perverse is obvious (so did the Lord’s disciples in John 6, many of whom, you remember, left Him for good for saying eat me, drink me), but you have given us no evidence that the the Lord or Moroni does. All you have done is wring your hands and cry “What about the children?” Any children who stumble onto this site, I trust, will comport themselves more calmly than you have.

  57. Spencer, I think we all recognize that we must use care in speaking about something so sacred. But you are going to have to explain more specifically what you think is wrong, for what you have said to be helpful. Jesus’ own words on the topic were surprising, and made many people uncomfortable. I don’t see that using the word “cannibalism”, or talking about other cultures’ practices in which humans eat the flesh of other humans is out of place in any way. Again, look at the words of John:

    “Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.
    Whoso eateth my aflesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.
    For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.
    He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.
    As the living Father hath asent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me . . .
    Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it?
    When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them, Doth this offend you?”
    (John 6:53-7, 60-1)

  58. “If you are offended by my remarks, you need to recalibrate,” he said, twitching.

  59. While I’m not certain I would use the terms Nate has used to speak of the Sacrament in a Sunday School class, Priesthood, etc. (look at the division it’s caused here), it really is hard to escape the imagery or what the emblems are to represent.

    One way I explain this in my World Religions course is to speak of how physically we live on what we eat. Spiritually speaking, we live before God (we are given life and continue to live) by taking into ourselves Christ’s atonement–his suffering, death and resurrection. The physical elements of the Sacrament are to remind, point to, the sacrifice of Christ. The priest’s breaking the bread is not simply for convenience, but part of the ordinace–all to bring to the fore “the body bruised, the life-blood shed,” that which was “bruised, broken, torn for us.”

    All of this combines in an interesting mixture of personal responsibility (Pres. Faust’s “how many drops of blood were spilt for me?”) and therefore repentance, coupled with our absolute need for Christ’s redeeming, enabling grace, and gratitude for what he has done in offering us a way out of the mess we’ve gotten ourselves into, as well as offering us a truly new and holy life in Christ–a life/name we must be willing to take upon ourselves. It strikes me that the emblems and action of the sacrament manifest how both “sorrow and love flow mingled down” (to use the phrase of the old Christian hymn). It is a moment, much like baptism, reminding us of death (Christ’s death) and new life (including the death of our old person of sin needed befoer we attain the promised life given in Christ).

    And to think this all starts with Jesus breaking bread and saying, “Take, eat. This is my body.”

  60. I don’t really know what I’m talking about, or if it applies (how’s that for a escape clause), but this has me thinking about the cannibalism discussion one could have about manna.

  61. If nothing else, this discussion serves to point out the differences between the Sacrament and ritualistic cannibalism. You hear the cannibal slur all the time from unbelievers (the analogy, as Ben H pointed out above, is kind of obvious), and it’d be nice to have an intelligent, ready response rather than gasp, that is sacred, please allow me to retreat to my fortress in the mountains.

  62. I do not wish to offend anyone here, but I have been most interested in this discussion. I have to admit, that I have never heard anyone teach such a belief that we somehow eat the body of Christ, any more than we actually die during baptism. I have always thought that it is only symbolic. I certainly do not mind the intellectual discussion of such things, but I think I would take exception if such things were taught during a Sunday School class. Not that I have seen anyone suggest such things.

    I think when you read the whole scripture, it becomes more clear that Christ was not talking about actually eating His body. He realized that the disciples were having some of the same concerns that have been spoken of here. So He tried to clear it up by the following. He said that “the flesh profiteth nothing.” And it would seem that He was speaking of spiritual things, not temporal things.

    But this is just my opinion, certainly nothing set in stone.

    60 Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it? 61 When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them, Doth this offend you? 62 What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before? 63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.

  63. David H (#61)”: Rather than focusing on my ?responsibility”/”guilt? for Jesus? suffering during the sacrament, I prefer to think of my gratitude that he ?would descend from His throne divine.

    I think that you’ve misunderstood what I am saying. I have not urged anyone to focus merely on Jesus’ suffering, but to recognize that to the degree that we do not acknowledge our part in that suffering, then his descent and rescue is less meaningful. I don’t think we can focus only one one of them.

    Spencer H (#62): I am sorry that you find the discussion offensive, but I don’t think it has been one that takes the Sacrament lightly. Keith’s comment (#68) is, I think, absolutely apropos.

    Obviously you do not care for the discussion. I understand both that you don’t and why you don’t. But I think it is over the top to accuse those of us in the discussion of engaging in something like pornography, a practice in which something sacred is objectified, used, and abused to titillate and for gain. This has been a serious discussion of the Atonement and of the ordinance where the Atonement is both typified and memorialized. It has been a discussion where we have tried to understand better what we are doing when we take part in the Sacrament. As several have noted, this discussion would probably be inappropriate for a Sunday School, Relief Society, or Priesthood class, but it doesn’t follow that it is, therefore, inappropriate here.

    CEF: I think you’ve also misunderstood the discussion. I don’t think anyone has suggested that we actually eat the body of Christ in the Sacrament. No one here is arguing for transubstantiation. We are thinking about what the symbol means, which I don’t think we can do unless we also understand the literal meaning of the symbol. That literal meaning is what gives meaning to the symbol.

    Thanks also for reminding us that even the first disciples were offended by this kind of talk when they heard Jesus speak in these terms.

  64. Thank you Jim. That does make much more sense. I guess there were times that the “realness” of the symbols seemed to be coming across much too real, and not very symbolic. :)

  65. May I just say, as the Snark In Residence, that Spencer H is the best thing I have read all day. You can’t make this stuff up guys, and believe me, I’ve tried! Wow. Keep up the good porn T&S!!

  66. Spencer H. doesn’t speak for me, but I for one feel the discussion has been better for his honesty. I’m glad Jim F. was able to respond in the way that he did.

  67. Mr. Kingsley, your attitude of mockery is duly noted. Fortunately, I think I’ll pull through the shame of it all. Despite your pointing and laughing, the caution to refrain from trifling with sacred things is sincere.

    I quoted D&C 63:64 above because we are counseled regarding the sacred: “..that which cometh from above is sacred, and must be spoken with care”.

    As to the followers who could not accept the doctrine, they failed to listen to the Savior with spiritual ears. The ideas being bandied about here on the Times and Seasons blog of all places is not coming from the mouth of the Savior and it is being added to in a way that you never have heard a prophet profess. This should raise the red flag of caution to all of you. Are you comparing yourselves and your myopic intellects (all of us, as imperfect humans) with that of the Master teacher himself, who taught the Atonement in truth, not corrupted or perverted with musings and intellectual gymnastics.

    Take caution that in attempting to intellectualize doctrine that you don’t become corrupters of it. There would be no greater victory for the adversary than for you to convince yourselves that you are wise when you are in fact on the fools path.

    For Christ to speak of his atonment as he has is one thing, but for a post by a Mormon Elders Quorum President on a blog called the Times and Seasons that promotes (or even implies) the idea of the Atonement as a form of spiritual cannabilism, despite the superficial technicalities, is just plain bad sense, and borders on full out corruption of the doctrine.

  68. I’m not judging you Steve. I’m advising greater caution regarding how we speak of sacred things, especially the sacrament. I’m only urging what we should all be urging one another regarding this thing.

  69. In regards to cannibalism, this whole discussion has the proper order of things all flipped around. Cannibalism is a corruption of a spiritual idea. The idea itself is not cannibalism. Cannibalism is the corruption of the idea. That is as far as the relationship goes.

  70. Brian, you’re twisting things, I suggested those promoting pornographic ideas would become pornogrophers if they continued it. Perhaps someone’s already trademarked “Doctrines gone wild”?

  71. Well, Spencer, I don’t want this discussion, which a lot of people have found interesting, to get sidetracked, but I find equating a doctrinal discussion, even a wildly speculative one, with pornography to be a bit of a twist in and of itself. Even if you’re saying the ideas on this thread are “pornographic” in a metaphorical sense, that metaphor makes little to no sense to me, as I believe Jim F. pointed out adequately.

  72. Spencer H. (#81): Though the thread began with a discussion of cannibalism, it hasn’t, for some time, focused on cannibalism, per se, but on how we can understand the eat and drink symbolism of the ordinance in conjunction with what John tells us about Christ’s teaching.

    Your warning has been duly noted, and I regret that some have noted it by treating you improperly. However, my failure to accept your warning is no more than a failure to agree with you about the character of this discussion. I appreciate the sincerity of your concern. I hope you appreciate the sincerity of my disagreement. I’ve just read over the thread one more time and fail to see how it does not speak of the sacred with seriousness. That is, of course, the point on which we disagree, an important disagreement, to be sure, but not one that either of us will be able to settle simply on our say-so.

  73. Can we get away from the metadiscourse and back to the subject at hand?

    I now see the life-sustaining sacramental flesh and blood/bread and wine/water symbols through the filter of my own experiences as a mother and childbirth educator. In addition to teaching that his atonement (and our remembrance of it through the sacrament) is sustaining food and drink, Christ also taught in many places that his suffering was a birthing, and our spiritual transformation in Christ is a gestation, birth, and nursing/nurturing. Beyond being birth symbols, pregnancy and breastfeeding are the only instances I know of (naturally and non-cannibalistically) in which one human being “feeds” off/ is sustained completely by another’s flesh and blood.

  74. …and (in contrast to cannibalism) without taking the life of the mother in the overwhelming majority of cases (though with inconvenience and in the case of birthing, with pain).

    I’m thinking (along with others) why I dismiss the mortal and/or Satanic practice of cannibalism as an analogy or even accurate description of what Christ taught his disciples about the meaning of the sacrament. Perhaps because I believe that the work of the atonement was accomplished by Christ during his life, ministry, and in the garden, where his atoning blood was shed, rather than in the torture chamber or on the cross. While I think it was essential that he experience reviling and probably torture also, I do not believe that the particular type of agonizing death that he experienced was essential to the salvivic work he did. Yes, it was essential that experience reviling and rejection, and that he die and overcome death by resurrection (however that was accomplished). But to me, the facts of torture and crucifixion are incidental (that happens to be the type of capital punishment Romans used at the time, but ostensibly that isn’t want caused Christ’s death after all anyway). Is this entirely too far afield for this particular discussion?

  75. A few relevant quotations from General Authorities, in no order but that of my discovery:

    Elder Orson F. Whitney, Conference Report, April 1931, Second Day, Morning Meeting, p. 62.

    The Spirit of the Lord is the food of our spirits. Without it they would starve. In the Eucharist, as it is called, we partake of Christ; but it is a spiritual, not a temporal, partaking. The bread and water, or bread and wine, used in that ordinance, are not, as some suppose, the transubstantiated body and blood of our crucified Lord. They are but emblems, symbolizing his sacrificial atonement. “Eat, this is my body; drink, this is my blood”–the alleged words of the Savior when instituting the Sacrament among his Jewish disciples, are to be interpreted, not literally, but figuratively If not a mistranslation, they are certainly a misinterpretation.

    President Anthon H. Lund, Conference Report, October 1916, First Day, Morning Session, p. 13.

    There has been considerable difference of opinion in regard to his meaning of the phrase, “This is my body,” when he said to his disciples, “Take, eat, this is my body,” and also when he gave to them the cup and said, “Drink ye all of it, for this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.” A great number of Christian sects and denominations claim that this did not signify that the bread and wine were emblems, but that we partake really of his flesh and blood, in the administration of the sacrament. Transubstantiation means that the bread changes by the blessing into his flesh, and the wine into his blood. This is not our opinion. We believe that the bread and wine are simply emblems of his body and blood. If we could imagine ourselves in that sacred room where he and his disciples were having the last evening together, where they partook of the paschal meal, and where he instituted this holy ordinance, we should see him then standing before the disciples, saying to them of the bread, “This is my body,” and of the contents of the cup. “This is my blood,” and yet we should see him standing in the full vigor of health and the blood circulating in his veins. It was not his blood in the cup, for he calls it at the very same time, “this fruit of the vine.” It was wine he gave unto them, but it represented his blood that was to be shed for the remission of sins.

    [. . .]

    Now, brethren and sisters, we partake of the sacrament to remember the sacrifice of our Savior, and to remember him. This is what he asks us to do. Whenever we put out our hands to take the bread, let the thought go with it, “His body suffered upon the cross for us;” and when we drink of the cup, let our thought likewise be of his blood that was shed for us, for the remission of sins.

    John Taylor, Journal of Discourses, vol. 10, page 115.

    The death of Jesus Christ would not have taken place had it not been necessary. That this ceremony should be instituted to keep that circumstance before the minds of his people, bespeaks its importance as embracing certain unexplained purposes and mysterious designs of God. They are explained in part, but they are not fully comprehended why it was necessary that Jesus Christ should leave the heavens, his Father’s abode and presence, and come upon the earth to offer himself up a sacrifice; that he should, according to the scripture saying, Take away sin by the sacrifice of himself. Why this should be, why it was necessary that his blood should be shed, is an apparent mystery. (February 22, 1/863)

    George Q. Cannon, Gospel Truth: Discourses and Writings of President George Q. Cannon, selected, arranged, and edited by Jerreld L. Newquist, p. 398.

    Even if penitent Latter-day Saints are forgiven their faults when they partake worthily of the sacrament, they do not eat and drink for that purpose, but in remembrance of the Lord and of His blood that was shed for our salvation that they may have His Spirit to be with them.

    For a very interesting discussion of some of the issues, one that seems to disagree with the position I’ve been taking, see J. Reuben Clark, On the Way to Immortality and Eternal Life, beginning on page 82.

    Bruce R. McConkie, The Mortal Messiah: From Bethlehem to Calvary, 4 vols., 4:, p. 59.

    All these accounts, woven into one majestic tapestry to hang in the halls of the heart of every true saint, enable us to understand what the Master does for his saints in the sacrament. From them we learn: (1) He gave himself, his body, the very flesh of which he was composed, to ransom men. His was a supreme sacrifice-that of his own life, his own body. The ransom paid delivers his brethren from the temporal and spiritual death brought into the world by the fall of Adam. (2) “In memory of the broken flesh, We eat the broken bread; And witness with the cup, afresh, Our faith in Christ, our Head.” We eat in remembrance?in remembrance of that Paschal hour, in remembrance of Gethsemane, of Calvary, of an open tomb.

  76. Jim, the problem is not with any of the certain follow up discussion regarding clearly appropriate issues with the Atonement, but in the post itself – the post in which Mr. Oman (no doubt with the best of intentions, I’m sure) posted what you read at the top of the page. I think many of the comments on this page are bright and well thought out. Much of the discussion however, and the head of it all, is just a result of poor sensibility.

    “lurking below the surface of our ritual lies a cannibalism that is not without its own spiritual logic.” This is all upside down, and that is more than a minor note. Cannibalism is a corruption and that is the relationship.

    The Atonement deserves to be treated with far greater care than to suggest on a public blog a spiritual cannibalism lurking below the surface. We’re human, we make mistakes. I think Nate made a mistake in posting what he did, and I think it is a mistake for folks to take the Atonement too carelessly.

    Intellectual pursuit is a superb thing. We should all endeaver in it. But to be beneficial rather than destructive, it requires maturity and wisdom, and that requires humility, which requires us to take chastisement and counsel from one another.

    Please take care with sacred things.

  77. Lisa, thanks for getting us back on task. The question remains, however, if the idea of eating Christ’s flesh and blood is not part of the symbolism of the Lord’s Supper, what are we to make of the fact that Jesus used quite specific language. See, for example, 3 Nephi 18:29, John 6:53-55, as well as Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 11:27. How are we to understand that language, and how does that help us understand the ordinance?

    My observation, prompted by Nate’s post, was that “eating” in this case seems to me have two meanings, one that reminds us of our complicity in the Lord’s suffering, one that reminds us that he saves us from spiritual and physical death. What disallows the first of these, especially since the scriptural verses I’ve noted seem to invoke the literal image (though, of course, not the literal claim that we eat his body and drink his blood)?

  78. I do not think any of us can individually claim responsibility for Christ’s suffering. Christ took upon himself the entire burden of mortality – the sin, pain, sickness and death. While we may deliberately sin, pain, disease and death are rarely voluntary. When considering whether our choices increase or decrease Christ’s suffering, we would have to factor in the fact that much of the pain of mortality is involuntary. Christ overcame all of mortality in the Atonement, not just the effects of willful sin.

    I don’t think one individual’s contribution to the suffering of Christ could be measured. The gulf between ourselves and God is infinite without the Atonement, and at the same time, our small bit of suffering is infinitesimal when compared to the billions of humanity that has lived on the earth. Christ suffered *for* me, but I don’t think he suffered *because of* me. I know he suffered for my sins, but he would have suffered just as much even if I died at birth in total innocence. I don’t think the suffering Christ endured is changed by our own personal decisions to sin or not sin.

    Does that make sense? I know Christ bore the weight of the sins of the world, but I don’t think that weight gains or loses a few pounds based on decisions I make now. The only decision I can make is to repent and ask God to apply the Atonement in my behalf.

  79. Melinda (#93): Note comment number 90. I don’t think anyone on this thread has said that we can individually claim responsibility for Christ’s suffering nor that we could measure the effect of our sin on his suffering.

    I know he suffered for my sins, but he would have suffered just as much even if I died at birth in total innocence.

    Perhaps, but that isn’t something we can directly deduce from the doctrines of the Church nor from the scriptures. It is your considered opinion. Others may have other considered opinon. (As for me, I don’t have an opinion on the question.)

  80. Even if there is no arithmetical sense in which we individually add to Christ’s suffering, we are still responsible in the sense that he did it for us, to save us from our sins, and we have sinned, which is why he needs to do this. I think this is part of what makes the symbolism of the sacrament so wrenching. It shows Christ’s love mingled with sorrow, and in our joy at partaking we should also be reminded somewhat of our own part in the sorrow.

    Lisa, there is something of a discussion of the question of what elements of the New Testament story as it is actually reported may or may not have been necessary, here. For my part, I do think he had to die, and die at our (human, sinners’) hands; I think that is part of the point. Part of what makes it possible for us to be redeemed is Christ’s willingness to accept suffering and cruel death at our hands. This could sound depressing, but hey, you have to remember the rest of the story: redemption. He forgave even those who actually nailed him to the cross, etc. And he is prepared to forgive us. What an amazing gift!

  81. “What disallows the first of these, especially since the scriptural verses I’ve noted seem to invoke the literal image (though, of course, not the literal claim that we eat his body and drink his blood)?

    Jim, part of what I’ve been trying to get at in our little sub-thread (and I apologized if it has been foisted upon you) is a better fix on where you’re going with this symbolism as it relates to our “complicity” in His death. When you say that the scriptures “seem to invoke the literal image” (as it relates to our complicity) are you suggesting that His death is based on our consuming Him in order to maintain our own survival? If so, my next question is, if there is any hint of “cupability” in our “complicity” can His offering still be viewed as freely given?

  82. Steve H. —

    Oh, I never doubted that your “cautioning,” as you put it, was sincere — and thus my very real dismay at your hints about hell and less subtle allusions to perverts and pornography. I try to balance my insulting rhetoric with a little levity, while you settle for solemn ponderousness. Fine — different styles and all that. You still have not made any sort of case for why Nate’s post is inappropriate and deserving of a wannabe General Authority-type denunciation. What you have essentially said so far is that the obvious analogy between John 6 et al. and certain ideas about ritual cannabalism has shocked you. Again, that’s fine — different thresholds and all that. But you have proved to no one’s satisfaction (but your own, apparently) that the discussion here constitutes a breach of morality requiring the strongest censure of the scriptures. It is typical of a certain mindset, common, in my experience, to the Bible Belt and Mormon Doctrine-ites, to accuse someone of collusion with Satan and then attempt to stave off criticism with cries of “But I really meant it!” Believe me, that’s no comfort.

  83. Jim F., thanks for #60.

    More generally, I’m interested in the revulsion that some feel in associating a ceremonial practice with the concrete actions that the practice symbolizes. I may be peculiar, but I rather like physical existence, in all its discomforts, pleasures, smells, sounds, feelings, hunger, death, life, blood, mucus, sweat, and tears. I’m glad to have a religious belief that links my spirituality to my physicality. And I’m delighted to have a Christ who seems to have done the same in his own life and death and life. I’m glad that Mary Magdalene was able to embrace Him before he had ascended. And I’m glad that the Book of Mormon records debates about whether an inanimate person “stinketh.”

    Most of us (me included) eat and drink quite literally the lives of animals every single day. Isaiah apparently thought it useful to compare the Lord’s actions to that of the lambs He ate at Passover. In fact, he emulated the very lambs going to the slaughter. Have we managed to forget that the lambs went then and go today to the slaughter because they were headed to the cooking fires and dinner plates of humans? Our Christ knew that we needed nourishment from Him as much as we need it from the lambs, fishes and loaves.

    Physical. Messy. Like the nursery on a hot Sunday afternoon.

    That’s the way I like my religion.

    Sweaty. With Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crumbs stuck to my arm.

  84. Spencer H., I meant. Well, Spencer H., I suppose I will take my own advice, assume your good intentions, apologize for my rude overreaction, and say, in all sincerity, that the Sacrament for me is a deeply sacred ordinance rendered more sacred by discussions like this one.

  85. Well put, Greenfrog! The messy, fusty nature of existence is nowhere more apparent than in my burning hot Provo apartment, and I feel to praise the Lord that Joseph did not damn the body but said, instead, that eternal life just wouldn’t be the same without it.

  86. Jack (#95): Are you suggesting that His death is based on our consuming Him in order to maintain our own survival?

    No, not quite. As Greenfrog points out (#98), part of living in this world is killing. As worldly beings, one dimension of the ordinance is the reminder that we bear responsibility for Christ’s death. The other dimension is the offer of salvation from wordly life. Eating flesh and blood is a wonderful symbol because it includes both of those dimensions, as well as others (though the others, such as the Passover ritual and the Paschal lamb, are I believe, nested in those two). 1 Corinthians 11:26 (a verse often cited by the General Authorities) says, “As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the Lord’s death.” I think that is a surprising claim: to understand the Lord’s Supper is to understand the ways in which we are proclaiming his death.

  87. I’m not as fond of the eat-flesh/drink-blood metaphor. I don’t find it to be a beautiful symbol. But I am reminded that this comes from the Lord. So I should become enthusiastic about it.

  88. Kingsley, you are willfully distorting my words in order to bellitle me and diminish my words. I never said you or anyone was in collusion with Satan. I noted your mockery before, and your contentiousness is now apparent as well.

    Folks, it can’t be clearer, cannibalism is the pornographic corruption of a sacred doctrine. To flip it around and imply then that there is a “lurking” spiritual cannibalism found in the Atonement is a horrible choice of terminology. Words mean things, you here that are lawyers know that all too well.

    It is logically akin to suggesting a lurking witchcraft and soothesaying in the principle of revelation. No, the first are the corruptions of the latter. Or in other words, It is like appending to the principle of proper sexual relations the concept of rape and claiming that under sexual relations lurks rape. Words mean things. These analogies aren’t perfect, most analogies break down at some point because they are merely comparisons.

    Regardless, all doctrines have their corrupt and pornographic counterparts. To justify our trifling with sacred things by rationalizing that this is how we grow intellectually is delusional, because the spirit won’t have a part in that, and without the Spirit, our intellects profit us very little.

    It is cannibalism that arose post-doctrine. It does not lurk beneath the atonement as somehow some spiritual part of it. Instead it is a foreign perverted element that arose by those who adopted it in opposition to the true doctrine.

  89. “This is perversion.”
    “I am offended by this pornography.”
    “[Y]ou could be becoming spiritual pornographers.”
    “[I]t is foolish and prideful to consider that a new idea to you must be new to others.”
    “This discussion is pornography. If you continue to promote it, you become pornographers and perverters of sacred things and are in danger of consequences of your own doing.”
    “If you have any doubt how dangerous it is to start meddling with sacred things, and in pitting your mind against the Lord’s,” etc.
    “I should emphasize this statement concerning the danger of perverse thinking: ‘wherefore, should he be cut off while in the thought, he must go down to hell.'”

    And so on. Spencer H., you have manifestly labeled those participating in these discussions as perverts who are in opposition to the Lord and in danger of hellfire because of it. That seems a little contentious to me. So far, you have defended your abrasive comments with claims of sincerity. I can do the same.

  90. Apparently, if someone calls you a pervert, foolish and prideful, an opponent of the Lord whose thoughts run the risk of hell, and is sincere about it, you have no right to defend yourself without accusations of contentiousness.

  91. I, too, very much like greenfrog’s comment and agree that there is a “messiness” of sorts in our efforts to sustain life, and that the symbolism associated with the Savior’s offering hints of that messiness. I guess I have some thinking to do before I come to terms with how–or perhaps, where–our “complicity” (and I’m not yet exactly sure what that means either) in His suffering contributes to the “mess”. (horribly bad pun not intended)

    I’m waiting, Spencer H.. Come, drive a stake through my wicked heart.

  92. Kingsley, you’ve done little more here than engaged in mockery and dishonesty. I can’t fault you for lousy reasoning. That goes with the former territory.

  93. Please, Spencer H., delineate my lousy reasoning by all means. The mockery I apologized for; your accusation of dishonesty I reject. You have come, like any self-appointed watchdog of Orthodox Thinking, kicking through the door with very serious accusations, none of which are supported by anything more than prooftexts which may or may not address the issues at hand. I quoted a small list of your quite contentious comments and made what seems the obvious interpretation. Rather than engage in mockery yourself, please explain why you feel justified in taking on the role of accuser. Nothing in your style so far could be further from that of Joseph Smith, who taught that the best way of correcting the wayward is to take them by the hand and watch over them with tenderness. Again, my reaction was as faulty and uncharitable as yours.

  94. May I try to help defuse this misunderstanding?

    Although I indicated early in the discussion (#16) that I found it disturbing to explore this issue in the terms stated, I followed the thread as it developed and I must concede that many interesting remarks have been made.

    But from the onset I mentioned that, in my opinion, “the word cannibalism, and the repulsive depiction it entails, is inappropriate.” In that sense I can understand Spencer H and his reaction. For many of us cannibalism is a word with a different connotation than a (symbolic) ritual partaking of flesh. The word comes from the Spanish Canibalis, recorded by Columbus, and referred to the allegedly cannibalistic Caribs of Cuba and Haiti. Since then the word has been associated with savage tribes, devouring their enemies in the bloodiest fashion. It is therefore the word libertines, atheists, Marxists have used to deride the Sacrament as barbaric and ridicule Christianity. Nate’s use of the word, in particular in the title of the post, was perhaps needlessly provocative. Christians discussing the modalities of the Eucharist do not use that term.

    No doubt more emblematic words for our religious context would have been less unsettling. Would anthropophagy have helped? Or rather theophagy. Or even corporeal manducation for those fond of some grandiloquence. Cannibals would lose their appetite if corporeal manducation were on their menu card. I found the expression also here in the Eucharist context.

  95. Adam, and you tell ME to settle down? It’s been a while since a Greenwood Apology (TM) has been publicly declared…

  96. Wrod = Word

    “Aoccdrnig to rscheearch, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae.”

    Which explains the still fluent readability of some comments. Of course a context is needed.

  97. Perhaps an understanding of the Egyptian Sed Festival would help in understanding the symbolism with respect to the Sacrament. It is contained in Facsimile #1. I will leave it to others to explain.
    The concept of coming forth a new person after participating in the festival would be useful in understanding it.

  98. JimF,

    I continue to have difficulty understanding why it is important when we take the sacrament not just to remember Jesus (and be grateful for Him and His atonement), but also to accept or think about our “complicity” or “responsibility” for His suffering.

    “Complicity” and “responsibility” seem similar to “blame” or “guilt” and “shame.” Perhaps you could help me better understand the difference.

    I know that He was “wounded for our transgressions [and] bruised for our iniquities.” But with “his stripes we are healed.” Isaiah 53:5. I am not sure how “healed” we can feel if we continue to blame ourselves (or do something like it) for His suffering.

    I am grateful to my mother, and acknowledge that she suffered birthing pains for me. Yet I do not think I need to accept “responsibility” or “complicity” (much less “blame,” “guilt” or “shame”) in her labor pains in order for me to be grateful to her or to acknowledge that she suffered those pains for me.

    Melinda,

    I agree with you that our sins do not increase Jesus’ suffering in the sense that His sacrifice is an infinite one. One may add something very large to an infinite set, and it does not become bigger–it is still infinite. Similarly, one may subtract something from an infinite set, and it is not smaller–it is still infinite.

    I also agree that the atonement reaches things for which we have no blame or culpability, including suffering imposed at the hands of others. As another example, it is through the atonement that small children are saved, yet they have no accountability or culpability. D&C 29:46.

  99. DavidH,

    I think the example you offer of the suffering endured through labor and birth is excellent–which echo’s Lisa’s comment (#88)

    I like how your example, as a parallel to the sacrament, is a reminder to us that another has suffered terrible pain in order to give us life. And that by remembering such, or hearts are softened and filled with gratitude–regardless of whether or not there is any cupability on or part.

    That said, there still may be an arguement for complicity inasmuch as we’re talking about “sin” as being the reason for the Savior’s suffering–which may not line up very well symbolically with the idea of bringing an innocent baby into the world.

  100. David H (#114) How can it be significant that we have been healed if we do not remember that of which we have been healed, our rebelliousness and covenant-breaking? If the scriptures and prophets advise us that to take part in the Lord’s Supper is to remember his death–which seems to me to indicate his suffering–how can I do so without remembering that for which he suffered and died, my sins? Of course to remember that we have caused his suffering without also remembering that he has made it possible for us to be healed of our sinful state would be pointless. But it seems to me that I also would be ignoring the point of the Atonement if I remember the latter without remembering the former.

    Not only

    Oh, it is wonderful
    That he should care for me
    Enough to die for me!

    but also

    I tremble to know that for me he was crucified,
    That for me, a sinner, he suffered, he bled and died.

    And

    I think of his hands pierced and bleeding to pay the debt!

  101. By bringing up Christ’s use of birth and breastfeeding metaphors for redemption and atonement, I meant to posit that these are more appropriate interpretations (along with loaves and fishes, manna, and other actual foods) of his injunction to eat of his flesh and drink of his blood, than the abhorent idea of human cannibalism introduced in the OP. The unique position of pregnancy/placental blood and human milk (which contains water, blood factors from the mother, and proteins and other substances that are the building blocks–the “clay” or elements of our flesh) is that they are parent to child life-sustenance (rather than other species or plant to human sustenance)–as Christ’s sustenance is (think of all the scriptures about us becoming children of Christ, about him birthing us, nursing us, etc). While some of the other scriptural atonement symbols are life-sustaining, they are not sustenance from the parental source in the same way that cord blood and breastmilk are.

    A striking difference between a mother’s sustenance of her child and of other food sources and cannibalism is that the embrio/infant/child is not cannibalistic in any sense. If sufficiently nourished and healthy herself, the mother is able to produce what is needed for the child’s sustenance both during pregnancy and nursing. Blood carries constant nourishment to the child through the navel (important scriptural symbol). Cell by cell, the child is “made flesh.” And bit by bit, we are perfected and sanctified. Breastmilk production increases to meet the demand as the child (or children) grow. It also changes in fat content, antibodies/healing factors, and other ways depending on the needs of a child (if they’re a preemie, for example, or ill for a period of time). What this means to me in terms of its implications for my understanding of the atonement and grace is that God is likewise able to sustain us, without diminishing the reserves, and also in ways unique to our particular needs. I think this symbol approaches what others have said about the infinite nature of grace.

    Ben, thanks for the link to the previous discussion. I thought Mormon doctrine was that Jesus was not executed, but rather voluntarily yielded up his spirit (i.e. did not “die at our hands”) except in the way that you described above–that he voluntarily did it for us, but not that he was killed by human hands/by crucifixion. This is important to my rejection of the cannibalism idea, endo or otherwise. God has power over death.

    For the sake of empathy, I believe a Savior would have to have been given some experience with the internal effects of sin/ separation from Elohim, endured mistreatment, even torture, even perhaps attempted murder. Still, it is important to me to know that the power of God is such that even the collective sins of the entire human family do not diminish divine power, else there can be no hope of God pulling us through all this crap.

    There is the fact that other foods are used as symbols for the atonement, including the flesh of animals. As well as completely non-food-related things, like debtors, field workers, winery workers, and other mundane examples. Some of these tie into the sacramental symbols, and some do not. I recognize that these give additional and different ideas about the work of saving souls; I just think the maternal symbols are more closely tied to the sacramental symbols than any of the others.

  102. The mighty Alpha hath constrained His part
    Offered flesh, blood and broken heart
    Pierced through by spear of rejecting kin
    Excruciated and excoriated by others sin

    Such offering born of grace
    Extending outward to Adams race
    Hath by atonement seared the rift
    ‘Tween man and God by holy gift

    And offered to a friend
    Eternal life in the end
    Wrought by the infinite
    Upon those of the indefinite

    And by which vile severity
    Redeems man in its entirety
    Subjection
    To mans rejection

    Who bites the hand pierced by nail
    Stays un-remitted beyond the veil
    Shudder the thought of such effigy
    For you and me.

    Harold B. Curtis

  103. JimF,

    I am still trying to understand the difference between the “complicity” and “responsibility” you suggest we must regularly feel or accept versus “blame,” “guilt” and “shame” we formerly felt for the sins that have been washed clean through His atoning blood. I do not think you mean that we should continue to feel “blame”, “guilt” or “shame” in connection with those former sins, even though Jesus suffered because of those sins.

    It may be that we should just agree to disagree. Or it may be that I simply do not understand what you mean by feelings of “complicity” and “responsibility” for Jesus’ suffering and how they can be spiritually healthy and healing rather than spiritually and emotionally debilitating.

  104. Spencer H,

    I find it ironic that while you dismiss the present discussion as inappropriate, you have made yourself a full participant in it. Though you take a different position on the matter at hand, you have participated in the discussion of the sacred as much as any. If those who discuss the current subject are pornographers, you are now one of them.

  105. Wow, Lisa! Thank you for that exposition. I really hadn’t realized how much there is to say on those lines about the relevance of blood/milk. In the end, I wouldn’t privilege those symbols over those of eating flesh, as you seem to, though. I wouldn’t say the infancy symbols are more accurate. I’ll have to think more about the issue of diminishing; I do think there is some of that going on. You’re right there are lots of symbols, and I want to draw on them all.

  106. In standing all amazed at the love Jesus offers me, am I compelled to reflect on the symbols to the point of self-degradation, or do I celebrate what it is that the Father offered through His Son, as one of His sons, in order for me to return to His presence.
    The evils of mortality, was and is not, a surprise to God. That is why He provided a Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world to atone. It seems to me that the condition placed on us was not to beat ourselves up over the condition we find ourselves in, nor to flagellate ourselves weekly over the suffering that He endured for us, but rather to remember in gratitude what it is He did for us, and to commit to trying to do better (whether or not we actually do is a mute point here).
    If our time in partaking of the sacrament is not spent remembering Him and expressing gratitude, then what value does it have spiritually? If Adam fell that men might be and men are that they might have joy, then where is the joy?

    Lisa Bushman…well said.

  107. David H. (#119): I do not think you mean that we should continue to feel “blame”, “guilt” or “shame” in connection with those former sins, even though Jesus suffered because of those sins. It may be that we should just agree to disagree.

    Perhaps we will have to agree to disagree. but you’re right that I am not arguing that we have to continue to feel shame. I don’t know, however, what more to say to make my point: gratitude for the Atonement is meaningless unless we recognize that it is is an atonement for me and my sins. As the hymn says, “I tremble to know that for me he was crucified, That for me, a sinner, he suffered, he bled and died.” That trembling before his infinite act of mercy is part and parcel of the recognition of his sacrifice and my gratitude for it.

    Larry (#122): I don’t see why you have assumed that I am advocating self-degradation or self-flagellation. One can remember one’s sins wthout that because of the Atonement. Neither have I (or anyone else on this thread, as far as I can tell) anywhere advocated spending our time during the Sacrament ordinance “not remembering him and expressing gratitude.”

    It seems that at least some who disagree with me believe that either I recognize that I have contributed to the Savior’s suffering or that he has atoned for my sins, but not both. I don’t see why that is an exclusive “or.” Indeed, I don’t believe that I can fully recognize and be grateful for his sacrifice if I do not recognize my need for it, a need that made the Atonement necessary.

  108. “[G]ratitude for the Atonement is meaningless unless we recognize that it is is an atonement for me and my sins.”

    I agree. He both suffered for my sins and atoned for them. He took away my blame, guilt, and shame, but not my holy awe and even dread that an obscurity like me brought a god to his knees in a sheen of blood. That I specifically contributed to his agony helps me understand the cruciality of the individual, the sacredness of a granite vault filled with names. There is nothing morbid in this view; it makes me matter; it makes me love him; it makes me his slave.

  109. A brief defense of “cannibalism”: When I used the word, I meant to refer only to the act of eating human flesh. In seems to me that there is no plausible way of reading John 6 other than as a reference to cannibalism, in this sense of the word. This does not mean, of course, that Christ was literally advocating cannibalism, or that he was not speaking symbolically or poetically. However, acknowledging that he is speaking symbolically does not relieve us from the necessity of thinking about the symbols chosen in order to figure out the meaning. In this case, Christ chose the image of human beings eating human flesh.

    Cannibalism apparently conjours up images of viscious savages eating civilized explorers in the wild tropics. Invoking the distinction between endo and exocannibalism was meant to distance these images from the Sacrament. (Although as the Shakespeare references illustrates, the idea of eating the flesh of an enemy as a sign of victory has a more universal cultural pedigree than the Kipling-esque vision of savage head hunters suggests.) For example, I doubt that those who engage in endocannibalism (such as making a drink from the bones of dead ancestors) experience it as a barbaric, murderous, or evil practice. As near as my (admittedly limited) research revealed, it was done in a spirit of solemn and worshipful respect. Spencer H. is absolutely correct that words mean something. However, they always mean something in the context that they are used. It requires an act of particularlly uncharitable and inattentive reading to interpret my original post as suggesting a disrespectful attitude toward the sacrament, or as ultimately drawing any close parrallel to the kind of exocannibalism that most find horrifying.

    Furthermore, I think that drawing an anlogy between John 6 and ritual endocannibalism is useful. For example, the scriptures frequently use military imagry to describe the struggle against sin and Satan. Thinking about this imagery by looking at military history hardly constitutes the claim that the struggle against sin is a matter of killing one’s enemies.

    I actually like Wilfried’s neologisms. I have to admit that in my initial post, I fell back on the vocabulary that I had, and I admit that I tried to play on the jarring initial connotations of the word in order to think about the rather graphic imagery used by Christ in John 6, imagery whose very familiarity seems to obscure the words being used. However, by the end of the post, I think it is quite clear that I have qualified my use of the term “cannibalism” to mean only the consumption of human flesh. In this sense, I think that initial post is entirely defensible. Spencer H. disagrees. He is wrong.

    Suffice it to say, that I think that Spencer H’s reaction (along with Adam’s reaction) were over wraught, and frankly, I found the personal attacks a bit offensive. Such, however, is life, and clearly Spencer and Adam found my initial post offensive in their different ways.

  110. Jim F.

    The hymn you mentioned is one of my favourites, and obviously one of yours. My comments were not specifically meant to counter yours, but more of what I have observed in others who seemed to struggle with who they are and their relationship to the Saviour.
    I am always seeing the same people, who are not guilty of serious sin, refusing the sacrament because they are always beating themselves up over the little things. In this way I feel they do offense to the meaning of the sacrament, because they are Celestial people, who just don’t realize it, and feel they have to be punished because of their contribution to His suffering.
    His was a willing sacrifice for me and everyone else. He knew our sins and our weaknesses; he knew and knows us personally. My point is that the sacrament to me represents the great joy that is ours because of what He suffered, and the privilege that is mine, and ours, to have a knowledge of that and partake of it in its fulness. This to me means joy, without equivocation.

  111. Larry (#126): I apologize for having been too quick to assume that you were criticizing me.

    I certainly agree that it is wrong to refuse the Sacrament out of excessive guilt. In fact, I think it is a twisted kind of self-exaggeration that implicitly and quite unconsciously amounts to “The Lord may have forgiven me, but I have higher standards than he.” Recognizing that I have sinned and that the Atonement was because of me and for me does not mean that our joy should in any way be equivocal. Rather, recognizing my past and what the Savior has done for me in that regard increases my joy all the more, just as the joy one feels on having recovered from a life-threatening illness is increased by the dangerousness of the illness that has been overcome.

  112. Lisa, you’d probably be interested in (or are already aware of) the late medieval iconographic and literary traditions of the lactating Christ, in which he is represented nourishing penitents with milk from his breasts. There’s also an iconographic tradition of the lactating Mary, including one great painting in England’s National Gallery (can’t remember name or painter, unfortunately) where the milk squirts from Mary’s breast into the sky, where the droplets become stars. It’s a lovely image and a striking metaphor.

    That’s all it is, though; I don’t think the breastfeeding/atonement figure works as a full-fledged analogy, in the way that you’re working it. As you point out, Christ offered his flesh and blood for us to consume voluntarily—and therein lies the moral power of the act. But the female body does not nourish a developing fetus or produce milk for a newborn voluntarily, as astonishing and awe-inspiring as these processes are: these are purely physiological phenomena in which moral choice plays no real part (aside from the basic decision not to abort the pregnancy). Indeed, even at the physiological level, it is largely the developing embryo that provides the hormonal stimuli that guide the course of pregnancy, not the maternal body itself. Of course, other aspects of mothering provide women with a whole set of really crucial and potentially redemptive moral choices, but no more compelling a set than fathering presents fathers, whose bodies do not host the events of pregnancy and lactation.

  113. On the question of whether Christ atoned for the combined sum of each individual human sin or instead atoned in a general way for a total human sinfulness, Jennifer Lane gave an excellent talk at this year’s SMPT conference on precisely this topic. She layed out the soteriological debate and summarized the consequences of each position for concepts of human agency, and then argued that the Book of Mormon’s unique concept of the “infinite atonement” requires the former scenario. A lively debate ensued, and not all interlocuters agreed, but I thought she mapped the philosophical terrain very well. Perhaps Jennifer (or Keith?) is lurking, and can be induced to elaborate.

  114. Nate (#125): In seems to me that there is no plausible way of reading John 6 other than as a reference to cannibalism, in this sense of the word. … Spencer H. is absolutely correct that words mean something. However, they always mean something in the context that they are used.

    I have really enjoyed reading this thread. But, I have found it hard (perhaps my observation will seem too simplistic, and as it’s hastily written, while watching a movie, too informal, but I think it at least bears pointing out…) to think of the reference in John 6 to flesh and blood outside of the context of John 1:14, where the Savior’s flesh is explicity linked to the Word. Although I don’t have my Dante notes in front of me, he goes wild on the corporality of the Word and, of course with all his medieval philosophical goodness, how who we are is what we look like, etc. etc. Of course, Datne’s world-view has all kinds of crazy implications for the “image graven in your countenance” imagery from Alma 5, but, getting back to the corporality of the word, taking the cannabalism metaphor a bit farther by extending it to include the Word which the flesh is equated to in John 1 (seemingly setting up a very strong context for further references to the flesh later in the gospel), we partake of the Word when we partake of the sacrament, ingesting it, and thereby, extending further to Alma 32, planting it as a seed, which grows into the tree, which of course, is the tree of life, and going back to all that medieval goodness, is of course also symbolic of the tree “on which Christ was hung.”

    Now, I’m probably wrong, but I do think that the canabilism interpretation is a good launchpad for a whole host of interesting symbolic discussions which I believe do much to enliven and deepen the imagery associated with the partaking of the sacrament.

  115. I hope I’m not making points that were already made. I haven’t had time to read through all the comments. But I’ve been mulling this post topic a bit today.

    Jewish law forbids drinking or consuming blood (Genesis 9:4, Leviticus 19:26, Deut. 12:16, Deut. 12:23-25, Deuteronomy 15:23 ) so it seems a bit odd that a Jewish Messiah would tell people to drink his blood, even metaphorically.

    I wondered if these verses in John were unique in scripture or if there were extra-biblical LDS scriptures that had the same sort of direct explicit “eat my flesh, drink my blood” language without mention of bread and wine. There isn’t a lot … but I did find similar language in 3 Nephi 18:28-30.

  116. I hope I’m not making points that were already made. I haven’t had time to read through all the comments. But I’ve been mulling this post topic a bit today.

    Jewish law forbids drinking or consuming blood (Genesis 9:4, Leviticus 19:26, Deut. 12:16, Deut. 12:23-25, Deuteronomy 15:23 ) so it seems a bit odd that a Jewish Messiah would tell people to drink his blood, even metaphorically.

    I wondered if these verses in John were unique in scripture or if there were extra-biblical LDS scriptures that had the same sort of direct explicit “eat my flesh, drink my blood” language without mention of bread and wine. There isn’t a lot … but I did find similar language in 3 Nephi 18:28-30.

  117. I hope I’m not making points that were already made. I haven’t had time to read through all the comments. But I’ve been mulling this post topic a bit today.

    Jewish law forbids drinking or consuming blood (Genesis 9:4, Leviticus 19:26, Deut. 12:16, Deut. 12:23-25, Deuteronomy 15:23 ) so it seems a bit odd that a Jewish Messiah would tell people to drink his blood, even metaphorically.

    I wondered if these verses in John were unique in scripture or if there were extra-biblical LDS scriptures that had the same sort of direct “eat my flesh, drink my blood” language without mention of bread and wine. There isn’t a lot … but I did find similar language in 3 Nephi 18:28-30.

  118. I hope I’m not making points that were already made. I haven’t had time to read through all the comments. But I’ve been mulling this post topic a bit today.

    Jewish law forbids drinking or consuming blood (Genesis 9:4, Leviticus 19:26, Deut. 12:16, Deut. 12:23-25, Deuteronomy 15:23 ) so it seems a bit odd that a Jewish Messiah would tell people to drink his blood, even metaphorically.

    I wondered if these verses in John were unique in scripture or if there were extra-biblical LDS scriptures that had the same sort of direct “eat my flesh, drink my blood” language without mention of bread and wine. There isn’t a lot … but I did find similar language in 3 Nephi 18:28-30.

  119. I hope I’m not making points that were already made. I haven’t had time to read through all the comments. But I’ve been mulling this post topic a bit today.

    Jewish law forbids drinking or consuming blood (Genesis 9:4, Leviticus 19:26, Deut. 12:16, Deut. 12:23-25, Deut. 15:23 ) so it seems a bit odd that a Jewish Messiah would tell people to drink his blood, even metaphorically.

    I wondered if these verses in John were unique in scripture or if there were extra-biblical LDS scriptures that had the same sort of direct “eat my flesh, drink my blood” language without mention of bread and wine. There isn’t a lot … but I did find similar language in 3 Nephi 18:28-30.

    p.s. I tried submitting this comment with hyperlinks for the OT scriptures and it got rejected several times. Took me awhile to figure out that was probably causing the problem.

  120. A Nonny mouse,

    I think what you say must have some bearing on the meaning of the sacrament. When the Savior says that He is the bread of the life and that those who partake of that bread will live forever, while those who ate manna in the wilderness perished, He’s not suggesting (imo) that there’s a difference between the two symbols (i.e., bread of life vs manna), He’s merely trying to convey to His listeners that He’s the real life giving agent–the One the symbols represent. So, if we equate manna with the bread of life, what we have is a bread that distills upon the earth as the dews of heaven–which (imo) is a representation of the word of God. One may draw a parallel between manna in the wilderness of Sinai and the Liahona in Lehi’s wilderness, which (compass) also represents the word of God.

    Anyway, that’s my long way of saying that your comment is interesting–the idea that we are taking into ourselves the “Word”, or the word of God when we partake of the sacrament.

  121. By the way, Nate, I think this little thread on “cannibalism” has turned out to be one of the most (if not the most) theologically meaning discussions in T&S history. Thanks to all involved.

  122. A Nonny Mouse: Interesting your discussion of the Word. Here’s a couple scriptures I found yesterday during Sacrament meeting (before reading your post) that relate: 2 Corinthians 3:3 “ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.” and Ezek 11:19-21 “I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statues, and keep mine ordinances.”

    Danithew: That is striking–that the Lawgiver who forbade the practice of drinking blood and eating polluted meat would now declare it a requirement, in a way. Perhaps to compel our recognition of the juncture of sin (represented by the abomination referenced–the eating of polluted flesh and drinking of blood–those things which had been specifically forbidden) and ritual animal sacrifice which then cleanses from that sin, which had been commanded even in OT times, and which specifically pointed toward and compels a recognition of our need for that Messiah. Note that doing the former can cause illness and death (eating polluted flesh), while the later (eating meat) sustains life. And that God gave these laws in complete knowledge of their significance and later fulfillment.

  123. Rosalynde–I thought you might respond to my comment. Yes, I’m aware of and have been interested in breastfeeding Christ literature and icons. I have not studied them depth but would like to. I’m not surprised by these images, as they are scripturally based. Isaiah 49:23 (Kings and Queens thy nursing mothers and fathers); Isaiah 60:16 (nursing=coming to knowledge of Lord as Savior & Redeemer). There are also the contrasting “curses”–like in Hosea 9:14 “miscarrying womb and dry breasts”–a direct result of forgetting God (see Hosea 8:13 for a direct tie-in to ritual sacrifice and flesh eating). I don’t know Hebrew, but some research I’ve done indicates that the term Shaddai (translated “Almighty” in KJV) can also be translated “breasted one.” When I looked up instances of Shaddai/Almighty in the Bible, I was struck with how many of these involved granting blessings of the breast and of the womb and lands flowing with milk and honey. Also, the Hebrew word “rechem” is the root word for both compassion/mercy and womb. I might think that one a stretch if not for Jesus’ use of the birth analogy for the atonement both to his disciples and in Isaiah. (I’ll see if I can post a couple references a bit later.)

    Now, as to the “breastfeeding/atonement figure” not working “as a full-fledged analogy”–I agree in part. Certainly as a stand-alone, the breastfeeding symbol does not. Do any of the symbols of God’s salvatory work? That’s why there are multiple symbols. Perhaps I overstated my claim, and recognize that the symbols that I have the most experience with will be more meaningful to me personally. But in saying I think that maternal symbols (including gestation, birth, breastfeeding, and maternal nurturing/protection) are “better” than the others mentioned here, I’m not claiming that they describe the atonement completely, but that they seem to me closer to what Christ did for us in certain ways (particularly in terms of the issue of sustenance without actual consumption of the body–or spirit–of Christ), and in that they seem to be referenced so often, once you start paying attention to them.

    Voluntary consumption is a good question about the infant analogy. I do not know how much volition an embryo has, but I believe more than is commonly assumed (as with figs). On top of that is the idea that each of us did chose to come here, and accepted the plan, including the means (gestation and birth) and perhaps even to some extent the particular circumstances –though I realize this is now venturing into Mormon folklore. We do not chose the particularities of the required ordinances of salvation either, but that does not diminish our acceptance of and benefit from them.

  124. I think Nate’s invocation of endocannibalism IS important for a reason beyond applying anthropological terms to a familiar ritual, precisely because it invokes some of the funerary associations of the Eucharist (which was, after all, symbolically the last meal of the condemned). By focusing on endocannibalism, the Eucharist fits confidently in the milieu of Mormonism’s vicarious ordinance work for the deceased, a time when we don’t necessarily ingest the dead but they inhabit us, borrowing our body for that brief period, just as ritually we borrow the body of Christ for the Eucharist. An apologist could argue that the promise of the endocannibalism in Christianity is fulfilled in the confluence of the living and the dead that occurs in Mormonism.

    The Eucharist as endocannibalism also suggests the sacred power of the corpse, an object which had incredible power for Joseph Smith, who even claimed that the integrity of the corpse was so vital that he could not imagine it being degraded in any important way, each core molecule would be reassembled for the resurrection (I will admit that there is a logical inconsistency here, as in cannibalism the molecules of a being are manifestly incorporated into another, but logical coherence did not seem to be Smith’s goal in this setting).

    Finally, I rather enjoy feeling a kinship with other cultures, and it’s not at all clear to me that endocannibalism [while strange, and medically somewhat risky–witness the unfortunate Fore and Kuru (i’m aware of the controversy about the extent of their endocannibalism, but they’re the most familiar example)] is evil. While I believe Smith would have resisted consuming the dead, precisely because of his need to maintain the integrity of the corpse, for those who engage(d) in it, endocannibalism is the “binding link” that ties (perhaps too literally for post-Victorian Mormons) the hearts of the fathers to the children and is an act of profound reverence for the dead. I think he might have understood it that way with sufficient exposure to the cultures who engaged in it.

  125. S (Sam?) Brown: I hadn’t thought of the link between the sacrament and vicarious work for the dead in the way that you put it. While I think that there is a danger of pushing the analogy to ancestral endocannibalism too far (after all, there is nothing in John 6 or any other sacramental text that I am aware of that creates such an explicit link), the points you raise are suggestive. I do think that it is significant that all of our ordinances seem to involve some sort of vicarious recapitulation of a prior story. It is also interesting that our ordinances recapitulate essentially two sets of stories: Christ (particularlly his Passion) and Adam, figures that Paul links together as the joint authors of the cosmic story of salvation. The Adamic stories, of course, are in some sense also stories about ancestor veneration, and it is interesting to think about how the Christological set of ordinance stories intersects with this filial devotion.

  126. Other places to see that the ordinance of the Last Supper is an explicit evocation of Jesus’ death: not only in that name for the ordinance, but also in the fact that we break the bread as Jesus’ body was broken (1 Corinthians 11:24) and that we cover the elements of the ordinance with a shroud.

  127. Jim F.–Now it’s my turn to say wow. How could these blatant pointers have escaped my notice? Perhaps I shouldn’t be so hasty to move away from the sacrificial/bloody aspects of sacrament and into more comfortable territory, even if there are explicit links to that domain.

  128. I think the covering also serves as a veil–especially when the broken bread is viewed as His broken, or fragmented body, which body is a representation of His church (as per Paul). Taking it a step further, the church then becomes a representation of His bride which, when adorned as such, is veiled.

  129. In the end I think that both yours and Jim’s representations are the same. The sacrament table is representative of an altar on which the sacrifice is placed. As in the Sed Festival, after we partake, we, in essence, become a new person, taking upon ourselves a new name.
    If we examine the chapel we worship in, moreso in the cathedrals of Europe and England, they are shaped in the form of a body and we are members of that body.
    The removal of the shroud enables us to partake of His flesh and blood, and also parts the veil so that we may enter His presence, as is His promise with the promise of His Spirit to always be with us.

  130. Jim,

    Of course, this introduction of the veil/sacrament cloth into our discussion begs the question: exactly which parts of the ritual that we see every Sunday are parts of the ordinance and are intended specifically to be that way, and which parts are merely cultural additions, or perhaps, part of the ritual. (Although it seems a little tenuous to make that kind of a distinction between ritual and ordinance, not being an anthropologist, it seems to bear out… Even though the rituals of our liturgy change [e.g. temple wording, etc.], can we make an argument that the ordinance part never changes though the ritual does? Maybe I should read some more anthropology before coming up with my own taxonomies for LDS behavior… :))

    For example, the shrouding of the bread isn’t a necessary part of the LDS version of the ordinance, though the added symbolism is interesting. Kneeling is a part of the ordinance. (Nobody’s talked about kneeling yet… all kinds of allusions there, begining with deference and respect to the deceased, of course…) Of course, the whole concept of deacons passing the sacrament and teachers preparing it isn’t exactly scriptural either… So, what parts of the ritual that we participate in every Sunday are part of the ordinance, and what parts are accretions that don’t necessarily have any bearing on the meaning of the sacrament?

  131. That’s true, ANM! There’s no mention anywhere in scripture of a covering or veil in conjunction with the sacrament. Is there? None that I can think of. There may be a way of pulling other symbols together that have shared meaning with the sacrament which may include a “veil”, such as the veil of the temple being rent at the time of the Savior’s death. But that may be stretching it a bit in terms of it being an impetus for introducing the cloth as part of the ceremony. Doubts are swirling in my head…

    Wow, me and my big ideas about the veil. The cloth may have been introduced as a means of keeping the flies of the emblems.

  132. ANM and Jack (##144, 145): Regardless of whether the cloth was part of the ordinance when Jesus introduced it and regardless of whether it might someday be changed, it is now part of it. The sacramental ordinance in which we participate includes covering the elements with a cloth. Its possible symbolism is relevant because it is a consistent part of our experience.

  133. Jim, (#146) And Jack (#145):

    This gets at the heart of what I was saying before, though: It’s certainly part of the ritual that we usually see portrayed. However, when blessing the sacrament in places other than sacrament meeting, no cloth is used. So, saying that it’s a part of the ordinance seems a bit hasty, which is why I preferred the term ritual. Of course, from an Elder Packer “unwritten order of things” point of view, the practice is the ordinance, and from a pragmatic point of view, that’s true too… So, it’s sort of a moot point. However, in terms of the intended significance and symbolic weight of the ordinance itself, I think its at least important to note that the cloth isn’t a part of the intended communication of the original giving of the ordinance.

    (Note: neither is necessarily the breaking of bread. Some accounts of Joseph’s restoration of the sacrament include requests to the brethren to bring large rolls of fresh bread to eat. Of course, in the act of eating the bread, we are necessarily breaking it, so that’s kind of a moot point too…)

  134. ANM (147) In terms of the intended significance and symbolic weight of the ordinance itself, I think its at least important to note that the cloth isn’t a part of the intended communication of the original giving of the ordinance.

    True, but we have very little information as to what was part of the original ordinance, except breaking of bread and drinking of wine.

  135. I just noticed that Jesus blessed and broke the bread when he distributed the loaves and fishes to the multitude. Interesting that our accounts of this miracle include both the breaking of the bread and the idea of infinitude. Manna also (no diminished resources). Ditto the wedding wine miracle, and Jesus’ teachings about living water. I’m still trying to work through the consumption problem with cannibalism. Seems the whole point of the sacrament is that it replaces sacrifice, which had to be done repeatedly, with a lasting, infinite, divine sacrifice, which expressly no longer needs repeating because of God’s infinitude. Yes, flesh and blood, but in a way, not a sacrifice of flesh and blood because of it’s incorruption. (???)

  136. Jim: My understanding is that the earliest post-NT Christian sources seem to suggest that the sacrament was literally a meal, much closer to the Seder ritual than our currently formalized symbolic meal.

  137. Geez, Nate, make one little comment about Brother LaVyrle and Sister MarRue being cannibals in sacrament meeting …

  138. Okay, just a few references as I said I’d post some, then I’ll shut up for a bit:

    The blood & water of salvation as a birth/rebirth symbol: John 3:5; 1 John 5:5-8; Moses 6:59-60; Mosiah 27:25

    Christ’s atonement as a birthing Isaiah 46:3-4 “from the womb” and “I will carry; and I will deliver you”; Isaiah 42:14 “now I will cry like a travailing woman”; John 16:21 explaining to his disciples what is about to transpire and before his intercessory prayer: “A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow…”

    Isaiah 55:1-2 milk as bread from Christ which fills; 1 Cor 3:1-2 I have fed you with milk; Isaiah 28:9 (these last two are more milk before meat type deals… Which puts them in the same category of sustenance, but (Ben #121) “priviledges” meat over milk, in a way. I’ll have to think about that.

  139. Nate (#150): True, but even that wasn’t the “original giving of the ordinance.” My point was that we cannot use ANM’s standard for deciding how to think about the Lord’s Supper because we don’t know much about what happened at the first one. That meal was, presumably, a seder meal, so we can assume that it had the basic for of the seder. But it also had to have been different than the usual seder meal or the offense that John reports wouldn’t have occurred. Did it include the prayer we now use? I doubt it, but that prayer is an essential part of the ordinance for us.

    ANM’s distinction between ritual and ordinance may be helpful in general terms, but I think it turns out that we have difficulty parsing which things are ritual and which are ordinance. So, being a phenomenologist, I turn to the usual experience of the Sacrament and use reflect on that. I’m not worried about the “essence” of the ritual/ordinance.

    (I understand, by the way, that there were times when the early Saints also celebrated the Sacrament as a meal. I believe that the Nauvoo temple dedication was one of them.)

  140. Lisa (#154), I assume that you also assume that we don’t have to choose between thinking of the Lord’s Supper in terms of birth and thinking of it in terms of sacrifice and thinking of it in terms of a meal and . . . .

  141. Jim, well, that would be a nice assumption on your part. I can actually be pretty narrow in my thinking, but I’m working on that. Actually, gestation and breastfeeding ARE meals. Whether Christ succors us like a mother, a loaf of bread, or a roast, it’s not really a different symbol when it comes down to it except in the ways that have already been discussed–that mothers give sustenance of their own flesh and blood without being “consumed” themselves in a way that bread and animal meat do and cannot.

  142. Jim F. #154: ANM’s distinction between ritual and ordinance may be helpful in general terms, but I think it turns out that we have difficulty parsing which things are ritual and which are ordinance. So, being a phenomenologist, I turn to the usual experience of the Sacrament and use reflect on that. I’m not worried about the “essence” of the ritual/ordinance.

    I completely agree that it is a bit of a moot point to argue about whether or not the veil/shroud/cloth is a part of the ordinance or the ritual etc., because in practice, it does play a part in the experience, and it is a part of the symbolism that we normally associate culturally with the sacrament.

    I do think, however, that it is important to at least pay lip-service to discussing the parts that are part of the ordinance vs. the ritual in discussions like this because I think there are some things that are traditional parts of the ritual that aren’t part of the ordinance. For example, I’ve lived in wards where organ music was part of the ritual. I’m sure we’ve all lived in places where deacons had to do a little something special everytime and if they didn’t, somebody got upset about it. I think most people at one point or another have been needlessly corrected by a temple worker when doing things in a completely valid way in terms of the ordinances at the temple because it didn’t fit in with what the temple worker thought was the ordinance.

    I’ve been instructed before that when the bread and water are covered by the cloth, they are unblessed. From a purely phenomenological point of view that’s true: the bread and water cease to have any symbolic valence as being the flesh and blood of christ after the ordinance is over: that’s why nobody worries about throwing out the bread or feeding it to the birds or dumping the water down the drain. From a blessing stand-point, though, I think everybody would agree that if the bishop saw somebody who needed the sacrament after the bread had been covered up (I’ve seen this one, too) that it would be just fine for him to have the bread uncovered and passed to that person along with the water…

    Anyhow, I agree with you Jim, from a symbolic perspective, it’s incredibly useful to look at the common-denominator experience… And I agree that clearly the shroud is very indicative of the whole death symbolic complex that was beind debated above.

  143. ANM (#157): I’ve been instructed before that when the bread and water are covered by the cloth, they are unblessed.

    That is very interesting. When I joined the Church in 1962, the instruction was that once the bread has been blessed, it must be disposed of with respect. The suggested methods were having the deacons eat it (which, as you can imagine, was not always done in a particularly respectful way) or “give it to the poor.” I couldn’t understand the second because I couldn’t imagine showing up at Widow X’s door with a handful of stale bread scraps.

    Oddly, there wasn’t the same kind of thinking about the water. We could pour it down the drain.

  144. Nate and Jim,
    The earliest Christian ceremonies were more along the lines of full meals, but all of the prayers we have from the Gospels, 1 Cor 11, and the Didache (some beleive the Didache prayers are from Q) confirm that the bread and wine were special parts of the meal, even though other foods were also consumed

    This is something which hasn’t been raised…why use bread as a symbol of the flesh instead of a nice peice of lamb?
    .
    I recently heard a talk from a professor who noted that this is a sacrificial meal without meat. He argued that this may have something to do with the fact that the meat that they would have used would have likely been sacrificed to a pagan god (though they could have found a kosher butcher somewhere in town). However, he argued that this meat-less ceremonial meal (a very strange thing) had a deeper meaning by raising the most basic food elements to the status of holy, over and against the meat offered to idols.

Comments are closed.