Mormonism and the Martyrdom of St. Stephen

St. Stephen's martyrdom, which we celebrate today, includes a valuable gem in discussing prayer with the LDS, better known as the Mormons.  Mormons refuse to pray to Jesus, because they don't see prayer to Him in the New Testament:

So, it is abundantly clear in Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount that we are instructed, indeed commanded (contrary to CRI’s claim), to pray to the Father. Nowhere in the New Testament are we instructed to pray to Jesus. Nor, am I aware of any passage of scripture in the New Testament that records any person approaching Jesus Christ in prayer as opposed to the Father.

Yes, it is correct to say that Israel prayed to Jehovah, who was the same person as Jesus. But should we do all that the Israelites did? Should we perform all that the Jews did for Jehovah? Should we continue animal sacrifice? Should we continue in the practice of circumcision? No, of course not. The Law of Moses was fulfilled in Jesus. So, just as many of the practices under the Law of Moses should not be practiced today, due to the teachings of Jesus and His apostles and prophets, nor should we use the Old Testament as our guide at the expense of Jesus Christ’s words and commands to pray to the Father.

There is no other command, in regard to whom we should pray, but that of Jesus to pray to the Father. Latter-day Saints have been taught in kind. 

So while both Catholics and LDS agree on the importance of praying to the Father, the LDS claim that this should be done to the exclusion of the Son.  Although they acknowledge that prayer to Jesus occurred in the Old Testament, Mormons refuse to do it today because they don't see it in the New Testament.  This is where St. Stephen's martyrdom comes in.

Johann von Schraudolph, Stoning of Stephen (1850)

In St. Luke's account of the Passion, Jesus begins and ends His Crucifixion with prayers to the Father.  He begins by praying for the forgiveness of His killers (Luke 23:33-34a):

And when they came to the place which is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on the right and one on the left. And Jesus said, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."

He ends by commending His Spirit to the Father (Luke 23:44-46):

It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun's light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!" And having said this he breathed his last.

Compare this with Luke's account of St. Stephen's martyrdom, from Acts 7:55-60,

But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God; and he said, "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God." But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together upon him. 

Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him; and the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. And as they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." And he knelt down and cried with a loud voice, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

So he prays to Jesus in exactly the same way that Jesus prays to the Father.  In fact, Luke even refers to it as prayer.  It's true that Jesus calls us to pray to the Father, but nowhere does He negate the Old Testament practice of praying to Himself, and the New Testament shows from the earliest days, that prayers to the Son continued in Christianity.  Scripturally, this is an open-and-shut case.

Of course, in the context of Mormonism, all of this touches on much bigger issues, like the Trinity, and the fact that we're called to worship Jesus Christ (which LDS also deny).

Merry Christmas!

Guido Reni, The Adoration of the Shepherds (17th c.)

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. 

And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.

And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, 

Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.

And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds.

But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.

Luke 2:1-20

Bartolomeo Suardi, The Adoration of the Shepherds (16th c.)

It's Time to Kill Santa

Thomas Nast, Santa Claus (1881)

Today is Christmas Eve, and we're at a turning point in the year. For Catholics, the Christmas season begins tomorrow with the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord. For secular culture, the Christmas season ends tomorrow, having begun last month around Thanksgiving. At the heart of this debate over the meaning of Christmas lie two men, one real, and one imaginary: Jesus Christ and Santa Claus. And it's time to kill Santa. 

I. Lying to Your Kids About Santa is Sinful and Dangerous

The Santa mythos is particularly problematic when, as it typically does, it involves parents lying to their young children.  Remember that parents "have the first responsibility for the education of their children" (CCC 2223), including, in a particular way, the religious formation of children.  These years are a golden opportunity: a few fleeting years in which children trust their parents, hunger for knowledge of the outside world, and aren't yet inundated with modern (often anti-Christian) culture.

The German version of Santa is terrifying.
But not as terrifying as his companion, Krampus.

It's bad enough for parents to lie to their children under any circumstances.  Even a lie meant for the well-being or amusement of another (an officious or a jocose lie, respectively) is sinful, as St. Thomas explains.  But this lying is particularly troubling in the context of passing along religious traditions, like the meaning of Christmas.  As the Catechism explains (CCC 2226), "Education in the faith by the parents should begin in the child's earliest years."  This is the perfect time to describe why we celebrate Christmas: to present, at least in basic terms, the story of the birth of Jesus Christ.  When we instead (or also) present Santa as a real person, we're exchanging the truth of the Nativity of Christ and the true St. Nicholas for a lie.

The only defense of this practice that I've heard is that it allows kids to be innocent.  It seems to me that the opposite is true: it abuses that innocence.  As psychology professor Jacqueline Woolley explains in the New York Times, kids are surprisingly adept at discerning truth from fiction.  Why then, the belief in Santa?  Because they trust their parents:

My view is that they are exhibiting their very rational and scientific cognitive abilities. The adults they count on to provide reliable information about the world introduce them to Santa. Then his existence is affirmed by friends, books, TV and movies. It is also validated by hard evidence: the half-eaten cookies and empty milk glasses by the tree on Christmas morning.

In other words, children do a great job of scientifically evaluating Santa. And adults do a great job of duping them. [...] So maybe this holiday season, when the children come rushing in to see what Santa brought, we should revel not in their wide-eyed wonder, but in how sophisticated and clever their young minds really are.

Why exploit that parent-child relationship?  Kids aren't going to suddenly stop enjoying Christmas without some lies about Santa.  In fact, something nearer the opposite is true: lying to your kids about Santa leaves them vulnerable to the needlessly painful experience of finding out the truth in embarassing ways from their peers.

It almost goes without saying that in lying to your kids about Santa, you undermine your testimony to those same kids about Jesus Christ.  Most Christian kids first learn about Jesus Christ from their parents.  If those same parents are intentionally mixing in falsehoods to the story of Christ, it's hard to see how that wouldn't risk undermining their kids' faith. 

Put another way, if your parents lied to you about the guy on the left of this picture, how likely are you to trust them about the Baby on the right?  Certainly, an adult can understand why we believe in Jesus and not Santa, but that's not neccessarily true of children.

And consider the cultural context.  We now live in a society in which this is a real thing: Camp Quest, a creepy atheist summer camp "for fun, friends, and freethought for kids ages 8-17."  Around the same time that your kids are learning from their friends that Santa is a myth, they may well have friends telling them Jesus is a myth, too.  Lying about Santa hardly seems like the best way to prepare them for this challenge.

II. Santa Detracts from What is Good About Christmas

Besides parents lying to their kids about religion, the Santa mythos represents the worst of the secular celebration of Christmas.  Brantly Millegan has an insightful post pointing out that our material culture needs Christmas to justify the month-long consumerist spending binge.  You can't get consumers motivated to drop hundreds of dollars on things that they don't need, things that nobody needs,without having a connection with ritual, and a generic "winter celebration" won't cut it.  So secular culture leeches off of Christmas in a parasitical fashion to make a buck. 

So there's not a "war on Christmas," per se.  Secular culture wants Christmas.  What it doesn't want is Christ.  And that's where Santa is useful: he serves as the central figure of Christless Christmas.  Anti-Christians groups like American Atheists get this.  They spent $20,000 to put up the sign pictured on the right in midtown New York.  Ignore the irony that they argue we should "dump the Myth" by getting rid of the historical figure (Jesus Christ) in favor of the mythical one.

Hollywood gets this: there are a handful of Christmas movies that at least mention Christ, but the majority are now firmly fixed on Santa, instead.  It's no longer surprising that entire Christmas movies can be made without a single reference to Christ.

Focusing on Santa also turns the focus towards gift-giving, and (more particularly) gift-receiving.  Thanksgiving, once about expressing our thanksgiving for all of the blessings we have, is increasing about the opposite: shopping to get more stuff we don't need, and aren't particularly thankful for.  Advent, once about our spiritual preparation for receiving Christ, is now about reckless materialism.  Instead of offering us a break from the rest of the year's materialist consumerism, the weeks leading up to Christmas are materialist consumerism in overdrive.  By the time the Christmas season actually begins on December 25, secular culture has worn itself (and its wallets) out, and doesn't bother with that whole "Twelve Days of Christmas" thing.  I've written on this before, and won't rehash it all here, but understand that Santa epitomizes that. We ignore the creche as we wait in line to meet shopping mall Santa.

Worse, we don't need any of this stuff.  Left to its own devices, the true meaning of Christmas is compelling: the King of the Universe becoming Incarnate as a poor Child born to a young Mother in a very dangerous world, all out of love for us.  His Birth is a fountain of grace, with angels singing His praises to a group of startled shepherds (Luke 2:8-20), and wise men from afar come and bestow gifts upon Him (Matthew 2:1-12).  This Christ inspires generation after generation of Saints to give up everything to follow Him, including men like the real St. Nicholas.

So this Christmas, my appeal to parents is to reconsider the impulse to pass along the legend of St. Nick.  Skip the legend, and give them the truth instead - it's better in every way.

Feminism's War on Women

Modern feminism tends to conflate gender equality with gender interchangeability, insisting that women aren’t truly free until they’re indistinguishable from men. In the process, the movement has pitted itself against both science, which finds sexual differences throughout the animal kingdom, and women themselves, who tend to be quite comfortable with the arrangement.

I recently wrote an op-ed for the Washington Times on this subject, and explore several areas in which dogmatic feminism ended up opposed to the well-being of women:

• A recent survey of undergraduates at UC-Santa Cruz found that no one, not a single man or woman, preferred for the woman to propose marriage. The study’s authors suggested this unanimity was the result of “the role that hidden power may play in many heterosexual romantic relationships,” and Jezebel’s Laura Beck called it “benevolent sexism.”

• According to a 2007 Pew Research survey of families with minor children, 79% of mothers described their ideal situation as one in which they worked part-time or not at all, while 72% of fathers preferred to work full-time. As a result, fathers tend to work more than mothers. As the Manhattan Institute’s Kay Hymowitz has explained, this “gender-hours gap” (a situation both sexes appear to prefer) is the primary cause of the so-called “gender-wage gap” that modern feminists hold in such derision.

• One of the gender gaps feminists have been slow to acknowledge relates to military deaths: despite making up nearly 15% of active soldiers, women make up less than 0.02% of U.S. military fatalities in Operation Enduring Freedom. Surely, feminists wouldn’t really claim that this is sexist against women?  Actually, the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN) claims just that, decrying the exclusion of women from the front lines as “a blatant act of gender discrimination.”

• Speaking of gender gaps, sex-selective abortion and infanticide is an unparalleled threat for females around the globe, and is the chief reason that 160,000,000 women and girls are “missing” from Asia’s population, a figure referring only to those girls whose lives were snuffed out on account of their sex.  Yet groups like Planned Parenthood continue to perform sex-selective abortions, except where prohibited by laws forbidding the ghastly practice (laws which they have adamantly opposed).

In each of these case, the feminist insistence upon equality-as-interchangeability demonstrably harms women, and I suggested in the article that we might understand this as the true “war on women,” particularly considering that the number of girls killed in sex-selective abortion is larger than the entire female population of the United States.

Is Marian Devotion Dangerous?

Scripture prophesies and prescribes Marian devotion, and a careful reading of the New and Old Testament together shows that Mary is given a pride of place rarely (if ever) found in Protestant denominations.  But that is not the end of the story.  Protestants examining this evidence will sometimes be intellectually convinced, but will encounter a roadblock: isn’t Marian devotion dangerous? Doesn’t it threaten to interfere with our relationship to Jesus Christ?

That’s a good question to ask, and I would respond to it in three ways.

I. Test the Fruits

Elizabeth Boott Duveneck, Apple Tree Branches (1883)

First, consider the matter empirically: that is, test the fruits (Matthew 7:16).  We can see throughout the history of the Catholic Church, down to the present day, people who burned with love for Christ and who were deeply devoted to His Mother. That is, we see several cases in which Marian devotion seems to have helped, rather than hindered, a Christian’s commitment to Christ. Where do we see cases in the other direction? It’s no good citing nominal Catholics who wear rosaries while shamelessly sinning. All too many nominal Christians (Catholics and Protestants alike) wear crosses while dishonoring the Name of Christ. In those cases, the problem isn’t that a love of Mary got in the way of growth in Christian sanctity: it’s that they don’t have a genuine love for Mary or Jesus, or they wouldn’t mortally sin.

So what we should be looking for is someone who was committed to Christ, but after taking up proper Catholic Marian devotions, lost his faith, or at least, lost his zeal.  If such a person doesn’t exist, there don’t seem to be the bad fruit that we would expect from a bad tree. In other words, by the test laid out in Matthew 7:16, it seems that we can say that legitimate Marian devotion is good, since it produces immense visible good, and no visible evil.

By that same token, test the fruits of the virulently anti-Marian crowd.  See how well (or how poorly) their anti-Marian views exhibit the fruits of the Holy Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23).

II. Contemplate the Role of Mary

The New Testament depicts Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant, the New Eve, the Temple Gate surrounding the New Temple, Christ, and the builder of that New Temple. What do all of these images have in common? Two things. First, all of them include purity: the Ark was too holy to even be touched (2 Samuel 6:6-7), Eve was created without original or actual sin, the Temple builder had to have bloodless hands (1 Chronicles 28:3) and no one could pass through the Temple Gate other than the Lord (Ezekiel 44:2-3).

Second, each of them is referential. The Ark is holy because it is where the Lord would come (Exodus 25:21-22). The same is true for the Temple Gate and its builder, since the Temple was filled with the Glory of the Lord (2 Chronicles 5:11-14). And sinless Eve is drawn from, and points back to, sinless Adam (Genesis 2:22-23). In other words, Mary is pure because Christ is Divine, and it is right that the person that Our Lord was physically connected to for 9 months be sinless… particularly given that sin cannot enter the presence of God in Heaven (Revelation 21:27).  This includes both external purity (Mary’s perpetual virginity), but more importantly, it includes her internal purity (her immaculate conception and sinlessness).

All of Mary’s life is in relation to her Son. Who among us can say the same?

III. Know Your Enemy

Revelation 12 has a fascinating depiction of the nature of Satanic attacks.  First, here is Rev. 12:1-6, with a heavenly depiction of the Mother of God:

Woman of the Apocalypse,
Hortus deliciarum (1185 A.D.)

And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery. And another portent appeared in heaven; behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, that he might devour her child when she brought it forth; she brought forth a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which to be nourished for one thousand two hundred and sixty days. 

Her Male Child is Christ, of course. If that wasn’t plain enough from context, the reference to Him ruling with an iron scepter is to Psalm 2:9. Reading Psalm 2:7-9 makes it clear that it’s referring to the Only Begotten Son, and this Psalm is explicitly applied to Christ in Acts 13:33.  The dragon is Satan (Rev. 12:9):

And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world -- he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. 

And here is how Satan reacts to losing (Rev. 12:13-17):

And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had borne the male child. But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time. The serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, to sweep her away with the flood. But the earth came to the help of the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the river which the dragon had poured from his mouth. Then the dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus. 

So when the devil realizes that he can’t defeat Christ, he attacks His Mother (Rev. 12:13), and out of hatred for her, persecutes the Church, since all of those who hold to the testimony of Christ are her children (Rev. 12:17).  To get to Adam, Satan attacked Eve. To get to Christ, Satan attacks Mary.

Conclusion

Understood properly, Jesus and Mary point towards each other, since love is not jealous (1 Cor. 13:4). Mary’s last words in Scripture about Christ are emblematic: “Do whatever He tells you” (John 2:5). So are Christ’s last words about Mary: “behold, your Mother” (John 19:27).  As Revelation 12 shows, it’s the devil who tries to separate Christ from His Mother, and His Mother from the followers of Christ.


So while I understand the hesitation that some Protestants (and even some Catholics) have towards Marian devotion, Scripture presents the continuous tradition of Marian devotion as a positive (Luke 1:48), while Satan is depicted as the one seeking to create a division between Mother and Son, and between Mary and the Church.

Does the Glorified Body of Christ Have Blood?

One of the strangest beliefs that I’ve come across through this blog is the idea that the glorified Body of Jesus Christ contains Flesh and Bones, but no Blood. I first came across it in a reader comment; since then, I’ve heard this view advanced by several Protestant apologetics websites, like the popular Calvinist apologetics blog CARM (Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry), along with Let Us Reason Ministries, and Bible.ca.  Additionally, this appears to be the traditional Mormon view, one endorsed by their founder, Joseph Smith.

As you’ll soon see, this theory suffers from a number of problems: the Scriptural support is virtually non-existent, it’s never endorsed (or even alluded to) by any of the New Testament authors or the Church Fathers, it runs directly contrary to the Church’s consistent Eucharistic theology, and the evidence offered could just as easily justify rejecting the physical Resurrection and Ascension.

I. What the “Bloodless Body” Believers Believe

Guercino, Doubting Thomas (17th c.)

This “Bloodless Body” view appears to have first been put forward by a Lutheran by the name of J. A. Bengel (1687-1752).  Bengel’s original theory was fairly complicated, as he had elaborate work-arounds for passages like Hebrews 9:11-14, 24-26, in which Christ is depicted as entering Heaven with His Blood.  In that case, Bengel claimed that “at the time of his entry or ascension Christ kept his blood apart from his body.”  He even argued that Christ’s Head appears white in Revelation 1:14 because it is drained of Blood.
Not everyone in this camp goes as far as Bengel, but all of the Bloodless Body believers share a few common traits. First, as I said above, they claim that Christ’s Resurrected Body does have Flesh and Bones, just no Blood. So they’re not technically denying the physical Resurrection, or at least not denying it entirely.  Second, their Scriptural case is built almost completely off of these two verses:

1. In 1 Corinthians 15:50, St. Paul says that “I tell you this, brethren: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.” Taken literally, this passage poses serious problems to any orthodox Christians.  Which leads to...
   
2. In Luke 24:39, after the Resurrection, Jesus appears to the Apostles for the first time, and says, “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have.”

So the claim is, flesh and blood can’t enter Heaven, but flesh and bone can.  You’ll find these same two verses used repeatedly by those defending the Bloodless Body position. For example, here’s CARM’s argument:

The Bible says that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 15:50).  If this is so, then how could physical body have been raised?  The answer is simple.  After His resurrection Jesus said, "Touch me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have" (Luke 24:39). You must note that Jesus did not say, "flesh and blood." He said, "flesh and bones." This is because Jesus' blood was shed on the cross.  The life is in the blood and it is the blood that cleanses from sin: "For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul," (Lev. 17:11). See also, Gen. 9:4; Deut. 12:23; and John 6:53-54. Jesus was pointing out that He was different. He had a body, but not a body of flesh and blood. It was flesh and bones.

Now, you might think that the fact that “the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Lev. 17:11) would be a reason that Christ, being as He is alive, would have Blood.  Not according to CARM.  Instead, they argue that Christ shedding His Blood on the Cross means that His entire Body was completely drained of Blood.  This implausible theory is being put forward for an obvious reason: to get around 1 Cor. 15:50.

II. What Does St. Paul Mean in 1 Corinthians 15:50?

Jacob van Campen,
The Last Judgment (16th c.)

So what does St. Paul mean when he says that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable”?  In 180 A.D., St. Irenaeus was already referring to it as “that passage of the apostle which the heretics pervert,” and it is easy to see how.  Taken literally, as CARM does, this passage would seem to deny the physical Resurrection.  Paul doesn’t just say that “blood” won’t enter the Kingdom of God, but “flesh and blood.”  So a literal reading would seemingly deny the physical Resurrection and Ascension of Christ, as well as the general resurrection of the dead.

But, of course, that’s not how St. Paul uses “flesh and blood.”  St. Thomas Aquinas provides the best explanation of this passage that I’ve seen:

We must not think that by flesh and blood, he means that the substance of the flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, but rather flesh and blood, i.e., those devoting themselves to flesh and blood, namely, men given to vices and lusts, cannot inherit the kingdom of God. And thus is flesh understood, i.e., a man living by the flesh: “But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you” (Rom. 8:9)

The Scriptural support that Aquinas provides is perfect.  If St. Paul commends his readers in Romans 8:9 for not being in the flesh, there are basically two possibilities:

• Paul isn’t using “flesh” literally;
• Paul wrote the Epistle to the Romans to ghosts.

Aquinas adds another nail in the literal interpretation by showing that Paul affirms that creation will inherent the Kingdom:

Therefore and accordingly, he adds, nor does the corruptible inherit incorruption, i.e., nor can the corruption of mortality, which is expressed here by the term “flesh,” inherit incorruption, i.e., the incorruptible kingdom of God, because we will rise in glory: “Because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21).

This is what good exegesis looks like: Aquinas is interpreting St. Paul in view of the other times he’s used similar phrasing, like Romans 8, to show what’s meant. He doesn’t just assume that Paul needs to be taken literally.  

III. Why Does Jesus Say “Flesh and Bones” in Luke 24:39?

This still leaves us with one detail to resolve.  Does it matter that, in Luke 24:39, Jesus says that His Glorified Body has “Flesh and Bones,” instead of the “Flesh and Blood”? No.  In both cases, we’re dealing with a specific figure of speech called a pars pro toto, in which a part of a thing is used to describe the whole: for example, saying “glasses” to refer to eyeglasses (which are made up of more than just glass), or “wheels” to refer to a car.  Or to use a pars pro toto that anti-Catholics often use, saying “Rome” when one means the entire Roman Catholic Church.

Bartolomeo Passarotti, Blood of the Redeemer (16th c.)

With that in mind, let’s turn to a challenge by a reader:

Christ says that He, in His resurrected body, has flesh and bones, not flesh and blood.

Can you show me another place in Scripture where the phrase "flesh and bones" is used to describe human corporeality?

Yes, there are actually several instances. Let’s start with Genesis 2:21-23:

So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; and the rib which the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”

The Hebrew word being translated there as “bone” means “bone, substance, self,” and in other contexts, is translated as “same.”  So if it wasn’t already obvious, Adam isn’t suggesting that Eve is bloodless, or that her blood comes from somewhere else.  He means that they share a common substance. They have, if you will, a shared “human corporeality.” Here’s another example, from Genesis 29:12-14,

And Jacob told Rachel that he was her father's kinsman, and that he was Rebekah's son; and she ran and told her father. When Laban heard the tidings of Jacob his sister's son, he ran to meet him, and embraced him and kissed him, and brought him to his house. Jacob told Laban all these things, and Laban said to him, “Surely you are my bone and my flesh!” And he stayed with him a month. 

This phrase is used at various other points in the Old Testament for relation (Judges 9:2, 2 Samuel 5:1, 2 Samuel 19:12-13, and 1 Chronicles 11:1).  In each case, the speaker is reminding the listener that their material bodies come from a common ancestor.  In English, we express this via the figure of speech, “blood relatives,” but both English and Hebrew listeners understand that it’s more than just bones or blood that are in common: it’s our entire matter, our corporeality. 

In none of these instances is there any sort of insinuation that the speaker or listener has a bloodless body.  Besides this, the argument from silence would seem to go both ways: if Jesus saying that His Body has Flesh and Bones means that It doesn’t have Blood, do the various instances of referring to someone as having flesh and blood prove that they didn’t have bones?  Could we, using this same logic, deny that His Body has hair or fingernails?

There’s also a very good reason to believe that Christ uses the “Flesh and Bone” imagery precisely to recall Adam and Eve.  In some (but not all) of the ancient versions of Ephesians 5:30, we find this line: “we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.”  This is an identification of the Church as the New Eve to Christ’s New Adam.  With that in mind, listen to St. John Chrysostom’s exegesis of John 19:34, from 407 A.D.:

“There flowed from His side water and blood.” Beloved, do not pass over this mystery without thought; it has yet another hidden meaning, which I will explain to you. I said that water and blood symbolized Baptism and the holy Eucharist. From these two Mysteries (Sacraments) the Church is born: from Baptism, “the cleansing water that gives rebirth and renewal through the Holy Spirit”, and from the Holy Eucharist. Since the symbols of Baptism and the Eucharist flowed from His side, it was from His side that Christ fashioned the Church, as He had fashioned Eve from the side of Adam. Moses gives a hint of this when he tells the story of the first man and makes him exclaim: “Bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh!” As God then took a rib from Adam’s side to fashion a woman, so Christ has given us blood and water from His side to fashion the Church. God took the rib when Adam was in a deep sleep, and in the same way Christ gave us the blood and the water after His own death.

This fashioning of the Church as the New Eve occurs, as the two Saints John tell us, when Christ dies on the Cross, and Blood and water come forth from His side. The next time that Jesus sees them is Easter Sunday, where He shows them His Body using terms that would immediately call to mind Adam … and the Cross.

IV. Conclusion

To recap, this notion that Christ has no Blood in His Resurrection Body is based on (1) an argument from silence, coupled with (2) a verse that, taken literally, would disprove the physical Resurrection and Ascension. Given how significant this would see to be, it’s remarkable that absolutely no one in Scripture or the early Church ever claimed this about Christ.

To base something so close to a denial of the physical Resurrection on such weak evidence is remarkable. So why is it such a popular among Mormons and certain Protestant groups? For Mormons, the answer is easy: Joseph Smith taught it. But what about for Protestants? I have a few hunches (bad Eucharistic theology, a soteriology and sacramental theology that tends towards treating matter as evil, bad philosophy related to the substance and accidents of the Body of Christ, a tendency towards reading everything in a literal fashion, ignorance of the Church Fathers, etc.), but I can’t say for sure. Any thoughts?