Some Protestants claim that Catholics try to “put Jesus back on the Cross,” at Mass, citing Scripture like “Once For All” or “It is Finished.” Joe explains why the Eucharist is necessary to complete Christ’s once for all Sacrifice.

Transcript:

Joe:

Welcome back, Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer and I want to wish you a happy holy Thursday as we commemorate the last supper of Jesus Christ in which he institutes the Eucharist and the priesthood. And I know many of you hearing that are already saying it’s not really what we believe in my tradition as an evangelical Protestant or whatever you may be, because unfortunately, while the Lord’s Supper should be a place of Christian unity, this is where we become one in Christ. It’s become between Catholics and Protestants, a place of real division, and not only between Catholics and Protestants, but between Protestants and Protestants that the understandings of the Eucharist or the Lord’s Supper you might find in an Anglican or a Lutheran service are going to be radically different from what you might find in a Baptist or non-denominational one. And in particular, there’s a lot of controversy over a claim that we as Catholics make, not only that Christ is present in the Eucharist, not only that the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ, but that in a strange way we are actually participating in the one sacrifice of Christ that many Protestants who are fine saying Christ is somehow present and with under the bread and wine or in some other way in the Eucharist, are not okay with the idea that this is the one propitiatory sacrifice of Christ.

So I’m going to give you a very short presentation of the Catholic position and then three common objections that I hear to the Catholic claim and then show you why these objections don’t actually understand the biblical meaning of sacrifice. They don’t understand either what Catholics are saying or more importantly in some ways what the Bible is saying about sacrifice. So without any further ado, the catechism in paragraph 1367 says that the sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice. Now how can that be because the victim is one and the same, the same meaning the same Jesus offers through the ministry of priests who then offered himself on the cross. Only the manner of offering is different. So it’s one and the same sacrifice. It’s not a second crucifixion that’s going to be very important. But this is somehow participation in Christ’s one sacrifice.

And since in the divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner upon the altar of the cross is contained in offered in an unbloody manner. This sacrifice is truly propitiatory, meaning it appeases God, the justice of God is met in some way in the offering of the Eucharist at the mass. Now that’s going to be confusing for a lot of reasons. Number one, this distinction between the bloody and the unbloody manner is already confusing. What’s meant by that, I’ll explain that at the outset just so we understand what’s going on because you might say, how could you say it’s unbloody when we’re offering the body and blood of Christ? Well, because bloody doesn’t just mean blood is present, but that the pouring of blood, I wouldn’t describe you as bloody right now unless you’ve got an open wound.

I don’t know about you have blood, but that blood is not being poured out. So we talk about the bloody sacrifice of Christ on the cross as opposed to the Unbloody way in which Christ is presented. Now we’re saying we’re not pouring out his blood again, we are not crucifying Christ. That’s very important. This is one of the most common ways that I see Protestants misunderstand what Catholics are claiming in the first place. So to make sense of this already, you have to have a sense that sacrifice is more than the pouring of blood. That’s going to be a common thread to how many evangelicals today misunderstand it. And understandably, when we think about the sacrifice of Christ, we’re imagining good Friday. But in fact biblically the sacrifice of Christ includes holy Thursday. It includes even the ascension into heaven. And we’re going to see all of that as we go biblically.

You don’t have to take my word for it, I can show you it in the Bible. So what are the objections people are going to have to this view that the mass is the represenation of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross? Well, one of them is going to be a pretty strong one frankly. Hebrews 7 27 says that Jesus has no need like those high priests, meaning the Old Testament ones to offer sacrifices daily first for his own sins and then for those of the people, he did this once for all when he offered himself or offered up himself. And so on the face of it here you’ve got the Catholic church every day offering the sacrifice of the mass for the remission of sins. And then you’ve got this text in Hebrews that sounds like, oh, we’re not going to need to do that as Christians.

And so if you don’t understand what Hebrew seven is actually saying, that looks like just a flat out contradiction. And you might be wondering why in the world were the early Christians convinced they were continuing every week and even every day to represent the sacrifice of Christ? Because please understand what I’m describing here isn’t some late modern, medieval, whatever Catholic view you can find the earliest Christians speaking in no uncertain terms about this very point. In fact, as far back as the first century indeed, we’re going to see even within the text of scripture itself, there is this understanding that this is the sacrifice of Christ. So why would we believe that when Hebrews 7 27 seems to say the opposite, that I want you to just hold that in mind because that’s going to be a lot of what we’re looking at making sense of what Hebrews is actually talking about.

But I want to give two other objections that you might hear along the way. The second one, this is literally from a week ago. A Protestant elder gave a, for some reason, a lot of evangelicals who don’t understand Catholicism at all think it’s important to give sermons during their own liturgical life, during their own church services where it’s a bunch of evangelicals gathered together and instead of presenting anything about Jesus’ death and resurrection, they gossip about Catholicism and give false teachings. And that’s unfortunate, but this is a thing that you’re going to find. And so this sermon was called How Rome Re Crucifies Christ, the Fatal Error behind Roman Catholic Eucharist. And now even from the title, you should be able to say, oh, that’s exactly the opposite of what the catechism just said. They just said it wasn’t re crucifying Christ, it’s representing his once for all death on the cross. But okay, here’s how that elder claims Catholic theology works. And I want to be fair, I don’t think he’s intentionally lying, although he couldn’t be much further from the truth. I think he just does not understand what the Bible or the church says about sacrifice.

CLIP:

So when you go to a Roman Catholic church, at the front is not a pulpit, it’s an altar. And on that altar, the priest conducts a service called the mass or the Eucharist whereby he calls down the physical body, the physical blood, the soul, and the divinity of Christ to come into the actual elements transubstantiation transforming the elements into Christ. And then once the priest does that, what does he do? He kills Christ, he re crucifies him, he transforms the elements and then he takes the wafer and he holds it up and he breaks the quote body of Jesus again.

Joe:

Now if you understand Catholic theology at all, you realize this is a really cringe-worthy misunderstanding of the Catholic claim. Remember in paragraph 1367 where it says the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and offered in an unbloody manner. Now with the Eucharist so very explicitly the church is saying, yeah, we don’t reskill Christ. We don’t think we’re doing good Friday every day in terms of sacrificing Christ over and over again as separate sacrificial actions where we are killing him time and time and time again, we’re not crucifying Christ yet this is a very common evangelical misunderstanding and I think what it points to is not just how badly evangelicals tend to misunderstand Catholicism, but how badly they misunderstand the Bible, namely this many of us, when we imagine what the Bible means by sacrifice, just have envisioned this idea of ritual killing.

But as we’re going to see the biblical meaning of sacrifice involves a lot more than that. I’m going to give you plenty of biblical examples as we go, but for now just realize what we have here isn’t just a misrepresentation of the Catholic view, but a misrepresentation of the biblical idea of sacrifice and a very common one. Now the third objection you’ll hear is, well, no, this cannot be of the sacrifice of Christ in any sense because Christ on the cross said it is finished. And you’ll hear this very popular story about what those words mean.

CLIP:

He said it is finished and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. The English phrase that’s translated it is finished it a single word in the original Greek text to tele. It means that something has been brought to its final conclusion fully accomplished and nothing more needs to be added.

Joe:

So you’ll notice all that’s saying is it is finished, means it is finished. This idea of nothing more needs to be added that’s not actually found in the Greek, that’s just theology being applied on top of the Greek. And we can get into whether that theology is right or wrong, but saying something is fulfilled or finished doesn’t actually by itself say that there’s not going to be anything else added when Christ fulfills scripture. That doesn’t mean that there are going to be no more scriptures and as we’re going to see that’s a very relevant example because the same language is going to be used for Christ’s fulfillment of scripture. In fact, on the cross when Jesus says it is finished, he’s talking about scripture, but that’s not what many evangelicals will tell you. They’ll tell you it is finished is this common expression that you find in a bunch of places, but allegedly particularly in one,

CLIP:

However, it was most commonly used in Greek business in association with the repayment of debts when the final balance was paid off, the creditor would write the word tetelestai across the certificate of debt, signifying that it was paid in full. It meant that the obligation was completely satisfied and the debtor was free.

Joe:

As you can imagine, people like to draw profound theological meanings from this. Look, we don’t have to do anything because Christ pays our debt in full, and that’s what toal us die means when he says it is finished. The problem is this is just literally not true, including all of the alleged claims about ancient documents that had esti written on debts that were owed, and then this was a way of saying that it was filled out. This is a 19th century error that we’ve known was false for more than 90 years. In fact, if you don’t have to take my word for it as a Catholic Biola University’s Talbot School of Theology, Dr. Gary Manning, who I believe is the head of the MDiv program there, but I may be mistaken about that. In any case, he’s done work on this exact area and he went to find out if this was true In his words, he says, since I’m writing a commentary on John, thought it’d be worthwhile to look at all the papyri on which this claim was based because this idea, this notion that this was a common thing used for the repayment of debt is coming from receipts, particularly 40 tariff import export receipts found in Egypt.

And what he finds is that none of them actually say Al isai. Instead they just say, Al, it’s an abbreviation. And the problem with that is that there are at least five different Greek words that begin with Al, and the one that this obviously refers to is not to telli, but instead the term taxed or paid as taxes. Why? Because these are tax documents. When you see tax documents with the beginning of the word for tax in Greek, the obvious word that you’re looking for there is the word for the taxes were paid, not the debt is paid in full. Well, this matters because, well, for one, we’ve known this since at least 1934, and the publishers of the papyri realized that they had misunderstood this as being short for to tellis die. And the official papyri databases now recognize the correct translation as the payment of taxes.

But more importantly, this means that in John 19, when Jesus cries out to tell us die, he’s not saying I’ve paid your taxes, nor is he saying, I paid your debt of sin because that’s not the way the term was used. And all of the papyri that allegedly support that don’t because they were looking at the wrong word, it was a shortened abbreviation and they guessed the wrong abbreviation. And it’s now very clear to anyone involved that on a tax document that the word is about taxes. It’s really tempting to view it as to telles die, but just doesn’t make sense in context. But fine, that just shows that those 40 documents, that wasn’t the case. But Dr. Manning then decided to look around to find any other place because you have actual documents where debts are paid off and not one of them muses to tell or to telles I to describe paid in full.

It just is literally not used in any ancient document, any of the ancient Greek sources, any of the ancient Greek papyri, any ancient Greek inscriptions to use this thing that it allegedly frequently most commonly met. It just literally did not mean that. And then he points out that contextually John 19, there’s a much more obvious explanation that what does Jesus mean by esti? Well look at the Greek of John 19. Jesus says, well, excuse me, John says that Jesus knowing that all was now finished again, ESI is used right there. So here’s an important bit. John 19 verse 28 uses to tell us die. And then verse 30 uses to tell us die and evangelicals take his meaning in verse 30 without acknowledging the meaning in verse 28, because in verse 28, what’s being fulfilled is not a dead of sin. What’s being fulfilled is the scripture that scripture is now being fulfilled. And then in case we missed that in case we had any ambiguity, John says, after having said all was now fulfilled, he then says to fulfill the scripture and uses a variant.

And so it’s very clear from John 20 19 28 to 30 what it is that’s being fulfilled here. Scripture is being fulfilled here. Now, how is scripture being fulfilled by Jesus saying, I thirst. Why does John say that? He says this to fulfill the scripture. I mean, surely Jesus was thirsty before this. Now there’s a whole sacrificial dimension and I really was tempted to explore that, but I didn’t both, number one for reasons of time and number two, because Scott Hahn has already done a better job of that in what’s called the fourth cup. So if you find his talk or I believe he has a book by that same title, it explains that in the liturgical context of the Passover, there were four cups. If you read the liturgy of the last supper in the New Testament, there’s only three. And so Christ bringing this ritual act to completion, bringing this liturgical action of the Passover to its fulfillment says, I thirst.

Obviously he’d been thirsting before that. So the thirst of Christ is to fulfill the scripture and it is the culmination of these things you have to understand to tell die in light of that. And so unfortunately, evangelicals aren’t reading John 19 verse 30 in the context of John 19 verse 28, they’re reading it in light of alleged papyri that turned out not to say what they thought they did. That’s bad biblical exegesis. So the idea that Christ says it is finished, so therefore the entire work of our redemption is finished or the entire work of justification is finished, that’s bad exegesis. What’s more St. Paul explicitly says Christ rose again for our justification. So that read of scripture is actually contradicted by the New Testament. No. If you understand what’s happening sacrificially, this is by all means a once for all portion of the sacrifice.

This is not the complete sacrifice that Jesus offers us. This is part of it and we’ll get into that. But going back to Dr. Manning, he says, this view that Jesus was proclaiming the fulfillment of scripture molest the view taken by everybody from Saint Leo, the great to Martin Luther. Jesus’s work is completed and scripture is fulfilled. Then he says the interpretation, oh, excuse me, paid in full. While an attractive and harmless suggestion, I’m not sure it is harmless, but he says, while it’s an attractive and harmless suggestive is based on a misreading of the evidence, doesn’t fit the context well and was never suggested before the 20th century. So there’s this very brief window in time in the early 20th century where scholars think they found these papyri that say to telli, and this becomes a popular kind of legend among Protestant pastors and it gets spread from pulpit to pulpit.

And so even those scholars actually pretty quickly correct that error. It lives on as kind of popular lore. So the peoples claiming this rarely, if ever bother even trying to point to papyri. They just tell you, oh yeah, they’re out there somewhere. If you look at them, you’ll find out they don’t actually say that. So okay, the paid in full meaning of it is finished. It’s clearly bad. I mean it’s just bad acts of Jesus. It may or may not be bad theology. We’ll get into that, but that still is going to leave these other questions. Why isn’t the cross a killing of Christ as some have erroneously claimed Catholics believe? And how do we make sense of the cross in the sense that Jesus’ death is once for all and yet Catholics claim to still be participating in it in some fascinating way. There’s a few things we’ve got to sort out here.

We’re going to look at the parts of a Jewish sacrifice. Then we’re going to look at a few particular Jewish sacrifices. First of all, the Passover because this is the number one motif through which the New Testament authors tell us to make sense of Christ’s death. Second, we’ll look at Yom Kippur, and then third, we’re going to look at this underappreciated part of Hebrews nine that talks about the creation of a covenant. So with that, let’s start with the parts of a Jewish sacrifice. As I said, a lot of us today when we hear the term sacrifice, just imagine that means ritual killing, but there’s more to it. So the mere fact that let’s say you’re a farmer and you kill a goat, you’re a goat farmer for purposes of our analogy, is that automatically a sacrifice? It’s not. There are a bunch of different sacrifices in the Old Testament, but broadly speaking, we can talk about a few different sort of steps or stages in a sacrificial action.

And significantly, these are not going to be four separate sacrifices. These are going to be four parts of one sacrifice. Now, I’m going to use the peace offering because I think you’re going to see this more clearly with that. Different sacrifices are going to vary somewhat, but this is just to give you the basic skeleton of what we mean biblically when we’re talking about sacrifice. So in Leviticus chapter three, it says, if a man’s offering is a sacrifice of peace offering, if he offers an animal from the herd, male or female, he shall offer it without blemish before the Lord. Okay, so there’s actually going to be step one there. You dedicate this animal before it’s even dead, you say, this is the one I’m going to be offering, that you don’t just wait till an animal’s dead and be like, oh yeah, the one that just got hit by a truck, that’s the one you get.

God doesn’t work like that. You have to give it to God first before it’s even killed. Then you lay your hand up on the head of the offering and you kill it at the door of the tent of meeting. And then Aaron sons the priest then throw the blood against the altar around it. So you have then the ritual killing and then the application of the blood. So we now have three steps, but that’s not actually it. In Leviticus seven, we’ve discovered that the flesh of the sacrifice of the peace offering shall be eaten on the day of his offering. Now, this is particularly the peace offerings for thanksgiving. Now remember the word Eucharist comes from the word for thanksgiving. So this gives us maybe a helpful way of understanding the eucharistic sacrifice as we’re going to get into that. But the peace offerings for Thanksgiving, you had to eat them on the day they were offered.

You couldn’t leave any of it until morning. In fact, it says if any of the flesh to the sacrifice of his peace offering is eaten on the third day, he who offers it shall not be accepted. Neither shall it be credited to him. It shall be an abomination, and he who eats of it shall bear his iniquity. So notice the eating wasn’t just a thing you did after the sacrifice. The eating was a necessary step for the sacrifice to be accepted. That’s going to be obviously pretty important because you’ll notice that means there’s at least four distinct stages to the sacrifice. You have the offering or someone’s called the consecration of the animal. You then have the ritual killing of the animal. You then have the application or the presentation of the blood of the animal that’s going to look different in different sacrifices. As we’re going to see with the Passover, the presentation of blood isn’t going to be around the altar, it’s going to be in the doorposts, and then you have the eating of the animal.

Those four stages aren’t four different sacrifices. Those are four parts of one sacrifice. And if you want to understand Jesus’s sacrifice, you need to break out of the idea. The sacrifice is just the death and be looking for where does Christ offer himself? Where does Christ lay down his life to die? Where is Christ’s blood applied and presented? That’s going to be actually two places, one on earth and one in heaven. And then where do we eat the flesh of Christ? Once you understand sacrifice having those dimensions, the Eucharist fits in perfectly and what’s more, you see the connection between the last Supper and good Friday. Here’s the thing, it’s not just that Evangelical Protestants broadly can’t understand how the Catholic sacrifice of the mass fits in with Good Friday. It’s that they can’t understand how holy Thursday is related to Good Friday. And so they think of Good Friday as a standalone sacrifice with just the killing, but there’s no offertory aspect.

That’s not even a sacrifice. The mere fact somebody or something dies doesn’t automatically make it a sacrificial death. There has to be a laying down of the life of the animal or in the case of Christ, his laying down of his own life, and where do we see him do that as we’re going to see at the last Supper. So with that, let’s turn from peace offerings and look particularly at the Passover sacrifice and why the Passover sacrifice, as I already alluded to this, is if you want to understand the sacrifice of Christ from start to finish throughout the New Testament, you are pointed towards the Passover. For instance, John the Baptist in John one says, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. That is a Passover reference. Likewise, at the last Supper, right before it, I should say, Jesus ... Read more on Catholic.com