When Jesus Says the Wrong Thing
David Mills on Qualifying Christian Language
The bishop of Oxford thinks that the Eucharistic language of eating the Lord’s Body and drinking his Blood so put off the modern man that Christians should stop using it. Jesus’ words in John 6:51–58 shocked and offended those to whom such language is utterly foreign. In his new book, Eating God, Richard Harries writes (as quoted in The Times) that
people who are groping their way into Christianity can suddenly find themselves shocked and horrified, though they may be too polite to express such feelings, at the sacrificial, cannibalistic language of the Eucharist.
He told The Times that Christians do not
take seriously enough people’s sense of horror at going to a Eucharist or Mass, if they have never been before, and hearing the imagery of sacrifice and eating God. It is very shocking imagery and needs a lot of explaining. But the Church takes it for granted and does not realize that people can find it shocking and offensive. . . . [S]uch an idea can seem, literally, revolting to many people today, and this reaction has to be honestly faced.
A Useful Warning
This is a useful warning. Christians often do not realize how they sound to others, in part because they speak of such things mostly to other Christians. They know the words so well that they do not see that the Christian vocabulary is a genuinely strange one to increasing numbers of their neighbors and that words that to them mean comfort and solace offend and frighten those who take them at face value.
They are sometimes like the traveler who speaks to the natives in English and never notices their uncomprehending stares, and sometimes like the traveler who notices the natives’ stares and speaks to them in English but very slowly and loudly. They act as if the natives are at fault for knowing their own language rather than English.
The Eucharistic language is, as Bishop Harries notes, especially upsetting today. The modern Anglican and Catholic rites are not quite so blunt as the Prayer of Humble Access in the Book of Common Prayer, with its “so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood,” but they say enough to shock the visitor.
The bishop is right, but then he goes on, as one rather knew he would: “I think we should qualify the imagery in order to help people realize that this is metaphor. We should use images like ‘the food of angels’ and ‘the bread of life’ instead.”
Leaving aside what he means by the ambiguous word metaphor, in this, one recognizes an effective maneuver in mankind’s ongoing attempt to domesticate the Christian message. (Favored, the layman notes, mainly by those in clerical and academic office who wish to continue in it.) The speaker begins with a perfectly sensible statement about the gap between Christians and secular modern man and offers a useful warning that the secular modern man may not understand and may even be repelled by Christian language.
David Mills has been editor of Touchstone and executive editor of First Things. He edits the opinion page of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
30.2—March/April 2017
Our Path to Holiness Runs Straight Through Calvary by Robin Phillips
33.3—May/June 2020
On Flight & Fight in the Present Tribulation by Douglas Farrow
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
