SRR #55 | Roman Catholics & The Mingled Cup Part 3

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SRR #59 | The Single Frame Hypothesis (Eschatology And The Danielic Imperative Part 4)

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I do a podcast. I'm not interested in your podcast. These are these are wolves truth be told
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I oftentimes lay awake at night trying to figure out how I can get rid of wolves in the church.
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We are unabashedly unashamedly Clarkian and so the next few statements that I'm going to make
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I'm probably going to step on all of the Vantillian toes at the same time and this is what we do at Simple Rep around the radio you know we are polemical and polarizing
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Jesus style. I would first say that to characterize what we do as fashion is itself fashion.
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It's not hate, it's history, it's not fashion, it's the Bible. Jesus said woe to you when men speak well of you for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way as opposed to blessed are you when you have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness.
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It is on, we're taking the gloves off, it's time to battle. All right welcome back everybody my name is
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Tim and this is Simple Rep from on the radio I want to thank you for joining us. We are going to be doing the third and final installment on the mingled cup today we have
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Timothy Kaufman with us as everybody I'm sure is aware he is our expert in Roman Catholicism so Tim thank you for joining us today.
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Hey it's great to be here for the episode episode 3 of the mingled cup thanks for having me. Well I've really been enjoying that and we're gonna get into it right now but let's play a commercial from our sponsor.
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Andrew Rappaport's book at whatdotheybelieve .com. Alright we are back with Timothy Kaufman.
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So Tim, you've been doing all the research on this. As a matter of fact, Tim, how long have you been researching this topic?
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Well this topic in particular I've been researching for a couple years and I have written on it before and we thought it would be nice to encapsulate it in an audio format so people can listen to it during their commute.
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But the overall study, it first occurred to me back in 2012 that I kept on researching the early church and I kept on finding that I don't get to Roman Catholicism until about the late 300s.
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And when I started looking at the history of mixing water with wine,
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I started reading through the early church fathers and I realized they kept on referring to manufacturing process, they kept on referring to what was common ingredients in water, the water and the mirum as we talked about, and they would talk about it in terms of the mixed ingredients for bread as well.
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But what was missing for the first 300 years after the Apostles was any evidence that there was a liturgical step of mixing the water with the wine.
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And so this is the result of about three years worth of research and it's been since 2012 when
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I first started realizing that, wow, it's always about 300 years from the Apostles before you start seeing
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Roman Catholicism pop up from a doctrinal standpoint. And that's what we'll be covering today. It's just one tiny little brick in that wall that shows that no matter what you look at, whatever we consider to be characteristically
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Roman Catholic, we always have to wait to the end of the 4th century for it to actually come up. That's pretty interesting that so much of what is
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Roman Catholicism that portrays itself as ancient is actually a late 4th century novelty.
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And we've been looking at that wall that Roman Catholicism faces when they try to trace their roots back to the beginning of the church, and as you said that they can't get past the latter part of the 4th century.
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And I think that's really important and I want to go ahead, and I'm just going to throw this out there, but we are preparing an eschatology series with you.
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So folks, we're setting things up here and it is going to be very, very good.
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Now I'll say again that there's been really no other person in my personal life who has influenced my eschatology more than Tim Kaufman.
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The stuff that he has written about, the stuff, his insight into these issues is just, it's fantastic.
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So we're not going to get into eschatology today, but we are planning for that, we're setting ourselves up for that.
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But Tim, can you do this for our listeners? Can you go ahead and give us a brief recap, just explaining what the issue is, why this matters, maybe go into what we talked about with the other two episodes.
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I don't know how you want to do it, but let me just give you the floor, you give us a recap, and then we'll just get into the topic.
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Okay, okay. So we'll jump in with a summary of episodes 1 and 2.
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We appreciate the folks who've been listening, and we're glad that people are finding this interesting information.
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It's important to us for the reasons that we have mentioned in the first two episodes, is that in the early church there are repeated references to using a mixed cup at the
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Lord's table, and the mingling of water and wine. In the last two episodes we've covered the history behind it, but what happens is that Roman Catholics, as a liturgical step in the
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Mass, what they believe is an apostolic ritual that's part of the Lord's Supper, is they bring water and wine to the altar, and then during the
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Lord's Supper they mix the water with the wine, and they believe that it's an apostolic rite, and that Jesus himself instituted it.
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So when Roman Catholic apologists talk to unsuspecting Protestants, they say, look, all the early church fathers make reference to mixing water with wine at the
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Lord's table, and therefore you're missing an important apostolic ritual, you're not performing the
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Lord's Supper the way Jesus instituted it. Well, it turns out when we study this, we find out there's no evidence of an actual liturgical step in the
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Lord's Supper for mixing water with wine until you get to the end of the fourth century. All the other references are unique in the fact that they reference a manufacturing process, or in one case they actually refer to a situation where people were trying to avoid martyrdom by using only one ingredient of the wine, which is water, and they were celebrating the
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Lord's Supper with water, and Cyprian of Carthage had to correct them and say, you're using only one ingredient.
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But let's just talk about the Roman Catholic justification for the ritual so that we can just lay the groundwork from the last two episodes.
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So the justification that Roman Catholics use for this idea, this belief they have, that they have received an oral tradition of mixing a little water with the wine at the altar because they think that Jesus did so, was first of all, in the
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Mediterranean culture, water was always mixed with pure wine as a part of the manufacturing process for wine.
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Greek, Jew, Roman, or Christian, it didn't matter. Everybody would mix their pure wine with water to cut it to taste and alcohol content to make it suitable for consumption.
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So that's the first plank that Roman Catholicism lays down to justify a liturgical step of mixing water with wine at the table.
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And we're going to discover the significance of that claim because we need to get to the end of the fourth century to find out when did they start making it part of the liturgy.
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The first plank, as I mentioned, is simply the knowledge that everybody acknowledges, is that in the civilized world, the
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Greek period, Jewish period, Roman, or Christian, everybody mixed their pure wine, or mirum, with water.
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The second plank is that the early church fathers all mentioned the use of a mixed cup as part of the liturgy of the
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Lord's Supper. Justin Martyr, Irenaeus of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria, Cyprian of Carthage, and Aphrahat of Persia.
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I mentioned those five because these five are the only references we have in the first three centuries, and they pretty much span the first three centuries.
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And they're all referencing a mixed cup, and they reference the use of a mixed cup in the Lord's Supper. And so that's the proof that Roman Catholics used, that Jesus must have mixed the wine and water himself at the table, thus instituting an apostolic rite.
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And they believe that they've received this as an oral tradition from the Apostles, and even though it's not in the scriptures, it's something we need to do today.
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So to walk back through episode one just very quickly, just have a brief summary here, we showed that according to ancient winecraft, mirum, which is a word that means mere or pure, mirum is pure wine, a thick syrupy substance, the raw product of an agricultural process, and prior to serving it as a beverage, the ancient cultures were mixing mirum with water first.
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One part water to one part wine, or two parts water to one part wine, or three parts, or even four parts water to one part wine, in order to cut the flavor to an appropriate level for consumption.
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It's similar to what we do today with orange juice concentrate. Nobody serves orange juice concentrate to their kids for breakfast, and nobody makes the kids mix it themselves.
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The mixing takes place in the kitchen, and that's what happened back then too. You take this wine concentrate, or mirum, and you add water to it.
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Now back then, drinking water alone was considered unhealthy, drinking wine alone was considered unhealthy, it was considered the habit of barbarians and the uncivilized.
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And importantly, and this is very important for today's discussion, nobody would have served pure wine or mirum at a feast without mixing with water to cut the flavor and content for alcohol.
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This was so commonly understood by the early church that Jesus' first miracle, the wedding at Cana, was actually the miracle of changing water into water mixed with mirum.
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And in fact, the way that the early church described the miracle was that it started with water, and then some of the water was changed to mirum, so that you end up with this suitable blend of mirum and water.
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So it makes sense that they thought that the water that was turned into wine was turned into mirum plus water, because with the knowledge of the manufacturing process for wine, that's what wine was, and everybody knew it.
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Just think of the look on the wedding host's face if the servants had brought straight mirum for him to taste.
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In the Gospel account in John chapter 2, he tastes it, and he says, this is fantastic wine.
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If they had brought pure mirum to him to taste, he would have spat it back out, because it was the drink of barbarians.
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Now in addition to that, much was made of the fact in the early church that the Jews drank water from the rock in the wilderness, but they did not harvest grapes until coming into the promised land, and again, they focused on the mixture of water with pure wine to make wine for drinking.
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So the mixed wine at the wedding feast was occasionally interpreted as an indication or a figure of salvation.
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Say that the wine or the pure wine or mirum was a figure of Christ's divinity, and the water was
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Adam, and so Jesus took on flesh, and so the mirum being added to the water was an indication of his incarnation.
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Or they took the mixture of the water was the old law, but the new word was the mirum, and so together, you know,
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Christ has completed the Testaments. Or the mixture of Christ with his people,
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Christ being mirum and people being water, based on Revelation 17. So the knowledge of mixing mirum with water, that is the two ingredients of wine, was so common that they just understood that, wow, that's amazing.
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Jesus used mixed ingredients to figure his incarnation.
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He used mixed bread, and he used mixed wine, and he took them and said, this is my body, this is my blood.
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And what they said of this was simply that he took agricultural products, and everybody knew that they were just manufactured products.
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So our first observation from episode one is that at the time of Christ, wine as we know it today, pure wine, or wine and water, or mirum with water, which is essentially a common secular manufacturing process, just like the manufacturing process for bread.
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We started referring to the actual writings of the early church fathers, and what we found consistently in the early writers is that they often described the mingled cup in the same context they described the manufacturing process for bread.
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Grains, adding water to flour, kneading the dough and baking the bread. Bread and wine were both the result of a mixing process.
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These were simple manufacturing processes known to everyone, and the early church often celebrated the fact that Jesus had used two elements of mixed ingredients, mixed bread and mixed wine, as figures for his body and blood.
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Very appropriate physical representations for the fact that in the incarnation he had mixed himself up with us.
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So his use of mingled or mixed products was thus special to the early church, which again highlights for us that their focus on the mingled cup was a focus on a manufacturing process, not on an apostolic liturgical rite.
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It also shows that nothing about their teachings on the mingled cup, individually or collectively, could possibly be used to justify a belief in an oral apostolic tradition that Jesus had added water to wine at the
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Last Supper. So I'm just going to walk through very quickly the five church fathers used to justify a liturgical rite.
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We'll start with Justin Martyr. He lived in the second century from about 100 to 165
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AD. He provides the earliest representation of the liturgy of the Lord's table, and the way he describes it is that the cup is brought to the table already mixed.
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Wine and water are already mixed by the time he gets to the table. And you can't get an apostolic tradition of Jesus mixing the water and wine himself.
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So Irenaeus of Lyons, also in the second century to about 202 AD, just the beginning of the third century, he spoke of Christ's use of the manufactured bread and the mingled cup in the
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Lord's Supper, showing that his focus was on a secular manufacturing process, not on a liturgical rite.
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And you can't get an apostolic tradition of mixing water with wine from a secular manufacturing process.
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Clement of Alexandria, middle of the second century to the beginning of the third, he spoke of wine in general.
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He spoke of wine at the Miracle of Cana. He spoke of wine in the context of John chapter 6.
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He spoke of water mixed with wine, and also juxtaposed the baking of bread with the mixing of water and wine, showing that again, his focus is not on a liturgical rite, but on a manufacturing process.
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And so whether he's talking about wine, or wine at the marriage at Cana, or wine as a figure for, you know, when
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Jesus talks about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, he said, well, in that case, wine is a figure for blood, and wine is mixed with water.
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And importantly, he even said it was important to mix as much water as possible.
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He's referring to mixing the mirum with as much water as possible, so that it's not used for getting drunk.
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And he emphasized that in the context of talking about the marriage at Cana and in John chapter 6.
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And so the Roman Catholic liturgical rite of adding a little water with wine at the
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Lord's table cannot be based on Clement of Alexandria's belief that you should mix the wine with as much water as possible.
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He's simply talking about a secular manufacturing process. It can't serve as a foundation for the
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Roman Catholic rite. So we move forward to the, now we're in the third century, so we're Cyprian of Carthage from about 200
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AD to 258 AD, and he thought that Jesus had made wine mixed with water at the wedding at Cana as a symbol of Jews drinking water alone in the wilderness, that is without Christ.
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But now Christians drink water with wine because Christ, that is the mirum, has been added to his people, which is the water.
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And he is making much about the fact that when the people came into the Promised Land, the first thing they did was harvest grapes.
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So he said, look, they drink water in the wilderness, and then they come into the Promised Land. And so that's significant because when he discovered that some
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Christians were using water alone in the Lord's Supper execution, he said they were being like the
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Jews again, going back to drinking water alone like they were in the wilderness. And he corrected them by saying that the
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Lord's Cup was neither water alone nor wine alone, but a mixture of the two. And the reason was that he knew that there are two ingredients to wine.
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There's mirum and there's water. And if you were to use just water for the wine, it was the same as using just flour for the bread, or just water for the bread, because he knew that the bread is made out of flour and water.
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And that shows that his focus was not on an apostolic rite of adding water to wine, but a manufacturing process for wine, because he coupled it with the description of the manufacturing process for bread.
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So Cyprian also insisted that the Christians could not celebrate the Supper with water alone, but they had to add wine, or using actual wine.
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And he was convinced that he had this on the authority of Jesus and Paul, because Jesus and Paul both had made reference to wine.
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And that was his argument. He said, look, they said that you should use wine, and therefore it's wrong to use water alone.
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Now what's interesting about that is that Roman Catholicism claims that they had this on the basis of an oral tradition.
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He insisted it was based on a scriptural tradition. And all he's showing is that, hey, they used wine, and therefore you have to use both ingredients, or else you're not actually using wine.
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So my point here is you can't get an oral tradition of mixing water with wine at the table from Cyprian's insistence that it was actually a written tradition in the
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Scriptures, and importantly you can't get an apostolic ritual of adding water to wine, when
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Cyprian's point was you should have been adding water, you should be adding wine to the water, because he was writing in a very specific context.
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So we get now into the 3rd century, and well into the 4th century, or Afrahat of Persia, and he wrote that the wedding supper of the
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Lamb would simply be a reenactment of the Last Supper. And he said at the wedding supper of the
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Lamb, the cup of salvation is mixed before the bridegroom takes his place at the table. And again this indicates that Afrahat, like Justin Martyr in the 2nd century, believed that the cup was mixed before it ever got to the table, and before Christ ever arrived at the table.
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And so again, you can't get an apostolic tradition of Jesus mixing water with wine at the table from Afrahat's representation that the cup was brought to the table already mixed, and that it was mixed before Jesus even sat down.
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So what we find is that, in summary, just to recap our first two episodes, Roman Catholicism believes that by mixing water with wine at the altar, they're holding to an ancient liturgy established by Christ himself, as if Christ himself had mixed the water with the wine at the table.
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And yet for the first 300 years after the Apostles, there's just no evidence for such a tradition at all.
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And in Afrahat of Persia, we're all the way through to 345 AD, it's the latter, the very end of the first part of the 4th century, and there's still no belief or teaching that there was a liturgical rite of adding water to the wine at the table.
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All the references we have so far is simply to a common manufacturing process, and repeatedly we see them identifying that scene.
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Just as the bread is mixed, many grains and flour with water, and the dough is kneaded and baked, water is added to pyramidium to make wine, and then is brought to the table to be served.
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And Jesus ended up using, at the Last Supper, two elements, bread and wine, and both of them were composed of mixed ingredients.
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And it was important to them that he had used physical items in order to show his incarnation.
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He had mixed himself up with us, and importantly, the early church thought, if he's using solid and liquid items as figures for his body, then he must have really had a body.
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Because in the early church, the biggest heresies were that Jesus did not really even become a man. And they said, no, no, he used bread and wine to show that he had a body of blood.
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And if he said, this is my body, then he must have really had a body. He wasn't a phantom like some of the heretics were saying.
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So that gets us to the middle of the fourth century, and we still don't have an apostolic liturgical rite anywhere indicating, hey, you're supposed to be mixing the water with the wine at the table in order to do what
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Christ did. So that's our recap. That's outstanding. There's no way
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I could have done a recap as well as that. So I mean, that just, I think, illustrates for our listeners how thoroughly you've gone through this material, how much research you've put into this.
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You said you've been studying this for three years, and it obviously shows.
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So real quick, I just want to remind everybody that check out Tim Coffman's blog. It's whitehorseblog .com.
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Because if you want to read some of the stuff that he's written on this, go to his website, go to his blog page, whitehorseblog .com.
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I think I already said that. But he has, I think it's a five -part article series on the mingled cup, talking about this stuff, if you want to be able to read some of this stuff.
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Because it's excellent. And what's so interesting is that I've never heard anything like this.
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And it's surprising to me to see that Roman Catholics will try to use this to establish their religion as the true church, as the true religion.
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And furthermore, that they will actually, they condemn you if you don't agree with this or if you reject this.
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So let's go ahead and get into today's part. Tim, where are we going with this today?
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Well, we're going to go a few places. First, we're going to address what was the turning point.
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At some point, they started treating this as a liturgical rite and believed that it was instituted by Christ himself.
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That is, the mixing of water with wine at the table. And second, we're going to go into the 11th century.
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And most folks are aware of the split that took place between the
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East and the West about 1054 and 1054 AD. And what they don't realize typically is that the mixing of water with wine was actually a key part of that split.
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And when we, with this background information we've given, people will then be able to understand what caused the split.
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And it turns out the split between East and West was based on a historical mistake and just flat -out ignorance of the ancient process of wine craft and the manufacturing process.
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And we'll get to that. And then at the very end, we're going to highlight just how inconsistent
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Roman Catholicism is to demand that we mix water with wine on the authority of the early church, something the early church didn't actually do.
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But they ignore the things that the early church actually did. And they write it off and say, well, we would never do that anymore because of this, this, and this.
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And so we find in the early church a lot of interesting practices that are perfectly normal if you understand that the bread and wine are just symbols of Christ's body and blood.
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And those have since been rejected by Roman Catholicism, or at least minimized. But then you get to something that the early church did not do and did not implement, and they bring down the iron fist and say, you have to do it the way the early church did, or you're not really following the traditions of the apostles.
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So we'll get to that at the very end. So there's three parts. The turning point at the latter part of the fourth century, how this contributed to the split between East and West in the 11th century, and then finally we'll wrap up the whole series with a summary of just how inconsistent
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Roman Catholicism is to insist on this as an apostolic rite, and then reject other things that the early church actually taught, which is perfectly consistent with the treatment of the bread and wine as simply just symbols of his body and blood.
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So let's jump into the latter part of the fourth century. So where did the tradition originate?
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Because so far we have searched through the early church. What we don't find is anybody saying that Jesus mixed water with wine at the table.
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For 300 years after the apostles, everyone knew that wine for consumption was water with mirum, and the references to the mingled cup refer to a cup that was mixed before the supper, not during a supper, because nobody would have brought straight mirum to the table.
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And I want to emphasize that. Nobody would have put mirum on the table to drink just like nobody would serve their kids frozen orange juice concentrate at the table.
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It gets mixed in the kitchen and then gets served up as orange juice. The Romans Christians, they all mixed their mirum with water to make wine, and for the first three centuries after Christ, it was understood that Jesus had made mixed wine, mirum with water, at the marriage at Cana, precisely because it would have been absolutely unthinkable to offer the beverage of barbarians or straight mirum to the wedding.
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Nobody would have offered mirum to the wedding guests. That's how commonly understood it was that wine was mirum with water, wine and water, and not mirum alone.
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And this may come as an interesting surprise, people listening to the podcast thinking, wow,
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I would have thought Jesus turned water into pure wine, but pure wine is mirum, and mirum is a thick syrupy substance that's high in alcohol content that only uncivilized people drink, and nobody would have served that at a wedding feast.
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Jesus just turned water into water with wine, just as if he had made bread out of water.
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You know, the bread actually has water in it, so he would have actually made water into water plus flour, you know, so the point is that everybody understood this was a manufacturing process.
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Everybody knew what mirum was. Everybody knew how wine was made. Everybody knew how bread was made. So along comes
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Hilary of Portier, and this is in the late 4th century. He's writing in the 350s or 360s
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AD, and this is in his writing called On the Trinity. It's book three, chapter five, and he comes up with something that's absolutely novel and unthinkable.
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He says, on the wedding day in Galilee, water was made wine.
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Have we words to tell or senses to ascertain what methods produced the change by which the tastelessness of water disappeared and was replaced by the full flavor of wine?
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It was not a mixing. It was a creation, and a creation which was not a beginning but a transformation.
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A weaker liquid was not obtained by an admixture of a stronger element. An existing thing perished, and a new thing came into being.
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Okay, so that's the end of Hilary of Portier, but notice what he has said. He has emphatically denied that the water that was turned to a wine at the wedding at Cana was turned into a mixture of mirum and water.
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He's basically saying that Jesus turned water into mirum. Now, if Hilary of Portier had been familiar with the ancient process of winecraft, he never would have suggested any such thing.
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It would be like saying that back a long time ago, people served orange juice concentrate to their kids.
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Nobody does that, and the fact was that everybody knew that Jesus had made water into water mixed with wine, because wine has two ingredients, mirum plus water.
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But at the end of the 4th century, Hilary of Portier suggested that no, it wasn't a mixture.
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It was pure wine. Now, based on what we know of ancient winecraft, there's not a household in all of Galilee that would have served straight mirum to its wedding guests.
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It simply wasn't done. Instead, mirum was mixed with water in advance of the feast to prepare the wine, just as Justin Martyr from the 2nd century said, and what
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Aphrahat from the 4th century correctly said. Well, that would have tasted terrible, and as you've already said that, yeah, and they complimented the wine as the best wine, saving the best for last.
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Do you think that he understood how awful mirum tasted? Because you're saying that if he had understood the manufacturing process, that he wouldn't have suggested that, but I'm wondering, had he ever tasted straight mirum?
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That's the thing. I don't think he really understood. I don't think he understood, and so he was suggesting that the water completely disappeared, and it was just pure wine.
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If you understood the process of winecraft, you would never suggest such a thing, and it's like you said, in John 2, verses 9 to 10, the servants brought straight mirum to the
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Lord of the Feast, to the Master of the Feast. They did not bring straight mirum, they brought the mixed wine.
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He tasted it, and he liked it, and if they had brought him straight mirum, he would have spat it out of his mouth, because it was the beverage of barbarians, and nobody would have served that to the wedding guests, and so here
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Hillary insists on something that would have been unfamiliar and impractical in Jesus' day, and certainly unknown to all the earlier writers, and that was that Jesus had made water into straight mirum.
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Now, folks who are reading the ancient texts and reading from the early Church Fathers, they probably wouldn't necessarily look at this as, you know, a seismic, ground -shaking event in the history of the
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Church, but the important thing is that the emergence of an opinion like Hillary's, a momentous departure from the understanding of the early
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Church, whose writers had objected strenuously to the consumption of unmixed wine, and it insisted that Jesus would not have served straight mirum at a feast.
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It just, it would not have occurred to them that Jesus had made a pure unmixed mixture. In fact, they drew a lot of meaning out of the symbolism of mirum mixed with water.
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They just assumed it was mixed, and said, wow, that's so significant. It's almost like a picture of Jesus marrying the
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Church, and he's the pure wine, and we're the water, and now we can never be separated because we're now mixed together.
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So the point is that this would have been a momentous departure from the understanding of the early
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Church, and in fact it was a novelty, this idea that water into pure mirum. Now, what that effectively did is that it moved the mixing of the wine from the kitchen to the table.
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If Jesus is serving mirum to his wedding guests, then the wedding guests have to mix the water in themselves, because again, nobody would have served straight mirum to the wedding guests, and so this idea that mirum is now a table beverage out of the kitchen and gets it back, gets it on the table, and that's when we start seeing this idea that water and mirum were present at the
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Lord's table, and so that gets us to Ambrose of Milan, and so he lived from 340 to 397
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AD. The bulk of his life, and certainly his adult life, was in the latter part of the fourth century, and so he's teaching new catechumens, these converts, about the history of the liturgy, and he's writing in the work called
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Concerning the Sacraments. It's book five, chapter one, and he was the first one to describe a ritual in which bread and water and wine are brought forward separately to the altar so that the wine and water could be mixed during the service as an important liturgical step, and he made a big deal about it.
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It was very, very important. So now reading from Ambrose of Milan, he said, We said, therefore, that the cup and the bread are set on the altar.
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What is poured into the cup? Wine. And what else? Water. But thou sayest to me, how then did
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Melchizedek offer bread and wine? What means the mixture of water? The priest touches the cup, the water streams into the cup, springs up to eternal life, and the people of God drink who have obtained the grace of God.
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So that's the end of Ambrose's quote, and what's important here is that he even knows that Melchizedek offered bread and wine, and he's saying that we offer bread and wine and water, and so he's anticipating a question from the new catechumen saying that, well, what is the meaning of the mixture of water if Jesus is doing what
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Melchizedek and Melchizedek just offered bread and wine? And so he makes a big deal about the fact that Moses had touched the rock in the wilderness and water flowed forth, and so just like that the priest touches the cup and water flows into it, and then from there he tries to make an argument that the church mixes water with wine because water and blood flowed out of Jesus' side at the cross, and neither can justify an apostolic rite.
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Now, when it comes to, you know, water in the wilderness and grapes being harvested as soon as they came into the promised land, the early church saw those figures as pretty significant, and in fact
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Cyprian argued against the use of water alone because it was like being Jews wandering in the desert, but none of them used it to prove an apostolic rite, and certainly this idea that because water and blood flowed out of Jesus' side, therefore the church mixes water with its wine at the table, that argument was unheard of in the first three centuries after the
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Apostles. It was a novelty, and so what we find is, you know, this is, you know, for those that are interested in this kind of thing, this is the origin of the mixing of water with wine at the table.
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It didn't happen at the Last Supper before Jesus died. It didn't happen in the first 300 years of Christianity.
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At the end of the fourth century, there started to be a misunderstanding of the process for wines. It was assumed that Jesus would have made pure mirim at the wedding of Cana.
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When you start talking like that, you've moved the mixing of water and wine from the kitchen to the table, and suddenly mirim is a table drink, and next thing you know,
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Jesus has mirim on the table with him at the Last Supper and has to add water to it because all the ancient cultures from the
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Mediterranean world all did that. Well, they didn't do that. They didn't do it at the table. It was always mixed beforehand, and so no such ritual is found in all the early church before the end of the fourth century.
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It's certainly not in the scriptures, and no writers had argued for such a ritual.
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They had simply argued that Jesus had used common wine and common bread as figures for his incarnation, and common wine was wine mixed with water, or mirim used mixed with water, and therefore he used a mingled cup, just as it had been served at the wedding feast and just as everyone had been doing for centuries before and after, and just like he used mixed bread, it was flour and water and many grains mixed together.
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So our point in bringing this out is to explain how a historical mistake and a misunderstanding in the latter part of the fourth century led to a
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Roman Catholic ritual of adding water to wine at the altar, and keep in mind that in the
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Council of Trent they said that you're anathema, you're condemned if you deny that you're supposed to add water to wine at the altar, at the table.
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But Tim, the Council of Trent was a long time ago, and I just have to make this point.
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Was that ever changed, the views at the Council of Trent?
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No, no, the views of the Council of Trent have never been changed, and the Council of Trent stands as an ecumenical council that Roman Catholics say is infallible, and in the canons of the
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Council of Trent, particularly canons on the Lord's Supper, it says that if you deny that you're supposed to add water to the wine at the table, then you're anathema.
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Now, since the Council of Trent has been Vatican I and Vatican II, and Vatican II plays down the condemnations of Protestants and the fact that they don't use water and wine at the table, but the fact is that the water and wine is codified permanently in the infallible doctrines, and I'm using air quotes now, the infallible doctrines of Roman Catholicism requiring that you mix water with wine at the table, or you're anathema, you're separated from the church, and it's all based on a misunderstanding, a historical mistake.
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You can imagine condemning people to hell based on something that's not in the scriptures, and in fact is based on a misunderstanding and ignorance that erupted at the latter part of the tree.
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It's a fascinating study from that point alone, but then you get into the High Middle Ages, and you have a huge split between the
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East and the West, and you realize that both sides are just arguing from ignorance. Neither side understood what had happened.
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They had long since lost track of the manufacturing process, and really thought that there was a ritual of adding water to wine, but the split between the
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East and the West had to do with, when do you add the water to the wine, and they were all arguing on something that isn't even true.
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Well, let me just make a quick plea to our Roman Catholic friends, people who were formerly
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Roman Catholic, if you have Roman Catholics in your circle, you know this is really what
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Colossians 2 .8 is talking about, "...see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of this world, not according to Christ."
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And so this is a human tradition that's not according to Christ, and I always love to capitalize on this.
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It's really hard to go back on something that was declared to be infallible, and what came out of the
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Council of Trent was declared to be infallible, and so it's really, you know, you really can't go back on that.
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This matters, and I just want to make a plea to our Roman Catholic friends to come out of that tradition, to come out of that system.
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Yeah, so let's go ahead and continue. Sorry about that. Okay, so we said we're going to recap
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Episodes 1 and 2, and then get into the actual turning point. When did this actually happen?
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Well, it happened at the latter part of the 4th century, and basically what Ambrose had basically written down as the liturgy became the norm, but what happened is that in the high
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Middle Ages, in the 11th century, there became...a
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controversy erupted about how the East and the West were celebrating the Lord's Supper. Both were still mixing the water with the mirum, but neither understood the history behind it, and both of them disagreed with each other, and it had to do with when you mix the water with the wine.
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So there were a lot of factors in play when the East and West went their separate ways. This by no means was the only thing that caused the division, but Ambrose's novelty and widespread ignorance of ancient white craft actually factors significantly into the division.
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So let's briefly return to the Catholic Encyclopedia. Historical error is preserved and codified for us there.
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It says, "...with regard to the water mingled with the wine in the Mass, the fathers from the earliest times have tried to find reasons why the church uses a mixed chalice, which implies that Christ consecrated pure wine."
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That's from the Catholic Encyclopedia about the liturgical use of water. And let me first clarify, you know, to say that the fathers have been trying to find reasons for this, it's really not fair to the early church fathers.
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They weren't looking for reasons. They weren't mystified by it at all. They just knew that, you know, the wine is made up of two ingredients, mirum plus water.
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And second, and very importantly, the gospel narrative does not imply that Jesus used pure wine.
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Pure wine is a thick, syrupy, high alcohol concentration substance that you wouldn't dream of serving to your guests.
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And so no, the gospel accounts do not imply that Jesus used mirum at the
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Last Supper. So in the West, early patristic references to a mingled cup were assumed to be a liturgical mixing of water with wine at the altar during the meal.
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But they concluded that even though the Scriptures don't mention the mixing of water with wine at the table, and the earliest patristic description had water and wine brought forward already mixed.
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And early in the 4th century, the description of Aphrahat had Jesus arriving at the table after the cup of salvation was already mixed.
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There was simply no expressed knowledge of a tradition that Jesus had mixed the cup himself at the table. Nevertheless, the
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Roman Catholic rite had added water to the wine at the table by the priest during the liturgy based on Ambrose.
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Thus, what was blessed in the words of consecration in Roman Catholicism in the West was a mixture of water with wine that had been blended at the altar by the priest on the false assumption that Jesus had done the mixing himself at the
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Last Supper. Now, what I want to highlight here is that when I use the word consecration in Roman Catholicism, when the cup is blessed in consecration, that's when
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Roman Catholics believe that the wine becomes the blood of Christ.
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That is, that when the priest blesses the wine, it turns into Christ's blood, and then you drink
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Christ's blood. Grand substantiation. That's going to be very important when it comes to the dispute between East and West.
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Now, in the East, a slightly different liturgy had developed. The Scriptures made no reference to the addition of water during the
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Last Supper, so the people in the East assumed that Jesus had taken a cup full of pure wine or straight mirum, though the historical evidence shows that in Jesus' day, and for centuries before and after, the consumption of straight mirum was not practiced in civilized
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Mediterranean cultures, Greek, Roman, Jewish, or Christian. Nevertheless, because some
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Eastern writers had referred to a mixed cup in the context of the Lord's Supper, the people in the
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East understood that there was a tradition of adding water, so they added it after the consecration.
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Thus, what was blessed in the consecration in Constantinople in the East was straight mirum on the false assumption that Jesus had blessed an unmixed cup.
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Only after the consecration was water added to the mirum, at which point the mixture was then administered to the people.
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So, in East and West, everybody gets a mixed cup, mirum plus water.
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But in the West, they mixed it before blessing it, and in the East, they mixed it after blessing it.
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And so, this led to a controversy, and I'm about to provide a reference here.
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It's from Henry Chadwick in his book called East and West, The Making of a Rift in the
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Church. Now, both rites in the East and West, and I haven't started reading from Chadwick yet, but this is just a summary, but both rites,
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East and West, had been forged in ignorance and misunderstanding, and both sides believed their liturgy originated in authentic ancient apostolic tradition.
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Such contradictory and mutually exclusive claims, however, could not forever coexist in peace, and a conflict was bound to arise.
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And that conflict came to a head in the high Middle Ages during an embassy of Cardinal Humbert from Rome to Constantinople, and this was in 1054
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AD. So, Chadwick summarizes the controversy, and he says, at Constantinople, the impression bequeathed by Cardinal Humbert and other
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Western visitors was one of incredible arrogance, and visitors to find that at the consecration of the elements,
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Greeks did not add water to the cup until after the bread and wine were sanctified. So, that's the conclusion of the quote from Chadwick.
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Now, think about the significance of this. The West thinks that they have an apostolic tradition, that Jesus mixed the water and wine himself and then blessed it.
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The East has what they think is an apostolic tradition of Jesus blessing straight mirum and then adding water to it.
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Neither one is right. Both sides were completely ignorant of history and of the ancient practice of winecraft, and also just simply did not understand what the early church was saying when it referred to a mingled cup.
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They were always talking about a manufacturing process, and the result is that the water and wine are mixed before they ever got to the table because that's what wine was back then.
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So, here you have an embassy from Rome to Constantinople, and they're indignant because in the
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East, they're mixing the water after the consecration, and in the West, they're mixing the water with the wine before the consecration.
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So, a tremendous amount of political damage was done on that embassy, and the Latins departed in contempt, the
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Latins being the Romans going back to the West. Now, the next century, Bishop Anselm of Havelberg in Germany tried to pick up the pieces.
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So, we're now in the 12th century, and Anselm of Havelberg engaged in an amicable, friendly conversation with Archbishop Nicetas of Nicomedia, and he recorded the discussion in his dialogues.
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Now, Anselm argued the Western position, and he recorded Nicetas' responses from the
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East, and he did this in book three on the differences between the Eucharistic rites of the
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Greeks and of the Latins, and so we're going to join them in a bit of conversation. I'll just try to recap what their conversation was from chapter 20 of book three on the differences of the
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Eucharistic rites between basically East and West, and this one has to do with on the mixing of wine and water in the chalice, which the
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Greeks do one way and the Latins do another. That was his subtitle. So, Anselm leads with this.
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He says, Tell me, if you will, why in the sacrifice of the altar you Greeks do not offer wine and water poured and mixed together?
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Why do you consecrate pure wine without water? And the Latin is vinum mirum sine aqua.
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So, he says, Why do you consecrate pure wine without water? After you have consecrated the pure wine, that is, vinum mirum of the oblation, then afterward you mix simple unblessed water with the most sacred blood in the chalice.
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Why, I ask, do you do this? So here Anselm is confronting the East, saying,
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Why do you use pure wine or vinum mirum without water in the
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Lord's Supper? And the East responded, this is from Archbishop Nicetas of Nicomedia, he responded that he was simply following Christ's example.
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He said, We do not read that Christ in the Great Supper of his, which is particularly called the
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Lord's Supper, consecrated water mixed with wine, aquam cum vinum mistum, in the chalice.
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That's the Latin for water mixed with wine. We do as he did, following his model.
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We have no other reason to save you in this practice. Okay, so here we have two sides.
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This is the blind arguing with the blind. Anselm is insisting that you should mix the water with wine at the table before you bless it.
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And no, Jesus didn't do that because it's not in the scriptures. So we bless mirum, and then we add water to it later.
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Basically, they're adding water to it later, as we'll see, because they want to follow the tradition of the early church, as if the early church actually added water to wine as a liturgical step.
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So now, this is to get back to what the two sides are arguing about. It was true that the scriptures do not speak of the right of adding water at the table, and so Nicetas was correct from the
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East. But we hasten to point out that the scriptural silence on the mixing at the table doesn't validly imply that the wine was mirum, or unmixed.
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All that can be legitimately said is that scriptures do not include the right of mixing in the Last Supper. The scriptures just don't mention the adding of water to the wine, but they don't necessarily...it
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doesn't necessarily mean that the wine was mirum. So on that note, Anselm thought that Nicetas had missed the point, and responded by appealing to the known practice of Jesus' day, that is, of mixing mirum with water prior to consumption.
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And notice that Anselm was about to appeal to a standard secular process. He says, although the gospel says nothing explicit about water as to whether it was added or not, nevertheless, it is reasonable given the custom of the
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Jews and Palestinians, who always drink wine mixed with water. Now, that was true, too. The Greeks, Romans, Jews, and Christians had all consumed mixed wine in their meals and all rejected as uncivilized the consumption of straight mirum.
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Mirum tempered with water was the typical drink of the day. But we hasten to add that the cultural practice of adding water to mirum does not validly imply that Jesus mixed it himself.
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All that can be said legitimately is that Jesus used common wine, and common wine was mirum mixed with water.
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So in the East -West dialogue, the flashpoint of the controversy here is that both of them thought that they had received an apostolic tradition of mixing water with wine at the table, and they're arguing about who's doing it right.
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The West is saying that you mix it beforehand at the table and then bless it, and the East is saying, no, you bless the mirum first, and then after it's blessed, you mix water with the wine.
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So the ancient cultures had indeed mixed their wine with water, as Anselm said, but he had no proof that Jesus had mixed it himself at the table, and the scriptures don't mention mixing wine at the table.
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But Nesoddus had no proof that Jesus had used pure wine or straight mirum. And so these are two people arguing from ignorance and based on a historical mistake.
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And from that point, the argument just collapses into absurdity. And so Anselm responds, and he says, hey, if you say it is rash to claim that he mixed wine with water at the
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Lord's Supper because we do not read this, well, I'm going to argue in the same way that it's rash to say that he did not add water to wine because we don't read the gospels that he didn't add water.
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I mean, you think about, these are icons of church history and ecclesiology and especially on the liturgy of the
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Lord's Supper, and just listen to this argument going back and forth. No, no, we're doing what the apostles did.
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No, we're doing what Jesus did, and neither one of them had any proof at all that Jesus did it the way they said.
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They're just arguing based on ignorance. And so what happens is that Anselm is simply left with nothing else except to appeal to the late 4th century novelty of Ambrose.
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So he reaches into his historical arsenal, and he says, because the gospel states clearly that blood and water came from the
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Lord's side on the cross in his redemption of our salvation, we seem rightly to offer wine and water offered as a mixed drink, as mixed, in our memorial of the
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Lord's Passion for the remission of our sins. Now, that was, of course, an appeal to Ambrose's late 4th century catechism when he was instructing people on the meaning behind the liturgy, and he argued that the symmetry of the blood and water that came from the
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Lord's side justified the pouring of water into wine at the altar. That's from Concerning the
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Sacraments, Book 5, Chapter 1, Paragraph 4. That argument can't be found any earlier than Ambrose, because people weren't using water and blood coming from Jesus' side as an argument for liturgical mixing.
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Why? It's because there was no liturgical mixing. Nobody was trying to justify it. And then
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Anselm, of course, in addition to Ambrose, tried to rely on Cyprian, and he argued that the water signifies the people, and the mirum signifies
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Christ, and so that the two must be found together in the cup. And this is very interesting, because he's appealing to Cyprian.
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And remember, Cyprian was writing in Epistle 62 that it's wrong for them to use water alone. And then he says, hey, using water alone is like the
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Jews wandering in the wilderness, but adding two together, the water and the mirum, is like the people finding
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Christ and being mixed up with him, and so therefore, you want to be mixed up with Christ, right? And so this is what the argument that's being made from Cyprian, and it's very interesting here, because then we start talking about what is actually in the cup when you add the water.
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Because if you're adding water to wine that hasn't been consecrated, then you're just mixing water, or the people, with just wine.
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And what's going to happen is the east is going to respond and say, no, no, no, you have to bless the mirum first, turn it into Jesus, and then add water, and that's the way the people get mixed up with Jesus, or blended with him.
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It's just listening to them talk, it's almost heartbreaking to listen to the ignorance that undergirded their entire argument.
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Both sides, the blind arguing with the blind, trying to convince each other that they had an apostolic right, it's all based on ignorance and a misunderstanding.
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So this is Anselm trying to dig back further to get to Cyprian. He says, arguing from the west, who said that we mix the water with wine prior to the consecration, he says, we do so also that water may be present in the blood of the new and eternal testament, for water signifies the people saved and redeemed in the communion of that same blood of the new eternal testament as the one body of the church incorporated, united, made holy, and offered up in its head, that is, in Christ.
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For it is written that waters are many peoples, that's from Revelation 1750. He says, when you
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Greeks offer only pure wine without water, that is, solum, vinum, mirum, sine, aqua, in the chalice, you do not then sanctify the church as the body of Christ with Christ its head, but offer
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Christ alone consecrated as the head of the church without its members. This practice seems to lack all reason.
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It's fascinating to read how he's trying to get a liturgical step out of Cyprian, and all
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Cyprian was arguing was, you guys shouldn't be using water alone because that's just one ingredient. So here
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Anselm, of course, appealing to that argument from Revelation 17, which is something Cyprian did, and he said, if we offer wine only, disassociated from us, if the water be offered alone, the people are dissociated from Christ.
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The problem with Anselm's use of Cyprian, of course, as we noted in part two, is that Cyprian was, at that point, arguing that the bread also was mixed and could be neither water alone nor flour alone.
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And if Cyprian had been arguing for a liturgical mixing of water and wine, which is what Anselm was trying to get out of him here, then
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Cyprian would also have had to argue for a liturgical mixing of bread. And it doesn't make any sense at all because Anselm knew very well that Cyprian had not been arguing for a liturgical mixing of bread at the table, but nevertheless he tried to use that truncated argument from Cyprian to justify something that Cyprian hadn't even been saying.
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That's how weak his position was. But from Nicetas' perspective, we're back to the
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East, the inconsistency of the West are even more problematic than that.
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In Rome, in the West, the wine isn't transubstantiated into the blood of Christ until the words of consecration are spoken.
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Thus, from the perspective of the East, how can the people be mixed with the communion of that same blood of Christ, that is, the wine signifying
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Christ and being transubstantiated into his blood? How can the people be mixed with Christ's actual blood if you add the water to the wine prior to consecration?
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If that's the case, then the people would just be mixed with wine and not with the blood of Christ. And if the wine is transubstantiated from a mere symbol of Christ into Christ himself at the words of consecration, is the water then transubstantiated into the people themselves at those same words?
01:00:07
I mean, it creates this huge, confusing situation. And so, to avoid that confusion,
01:00:15
Nicetas had a very reasonable response. He says, the Greeks added water after the consecration so that the people actually would be mixed up with Christ's blood instead of merely being mixed up with wine.
01:00:28
So, this is quoting from him now. He says, as you have said, this is Nicetas arguing from the
01:00:34
East. He says, as you've said, many waters are many peoples, but we, imitating the exact model of the
01:00:40
Lord's Supper, offer only pure wine, that is, vinum mirum tantum, in the cup for the consecration as the blood of the new and eternal testament through divine operation and the power in the ministry of the priest.
01:00:53
So, he's talking about consecration. He says, we consecrate mirum, and the mirum then is blessed and becomes
01:01:02
Christ's blood. And afterward, we reasonably and appropriately mix in water so that the people may be sanctified through this union, not by their own agency, now that they are united with the sacred blood.
01:01:14
Thus, we devoutly celebrate the consecration of wine, pure and by itself, that is, mirum.
01:01:22
Indeed, we find it less appropriate for that which sanctifies and that which is to be sanctified to be consecrated equally and one in the same act of consecration.
01:01:30
He's arguing that it doesn't make sense to consecrate water and wine together. You consecrate the wine to make it
01:01:37
Christ's blood, then you add water, and that symbolizes the people being added to Christ. So, the point is, both sides claim to be imitating the exact model of the
01:01:48
Lord's Supper, to use their words, and yet neither was actually doing what the Lord had instituted. The West added water to wine at the table, something
01:01:56
Jesus did not do, and then they consecrated it. The East consecrated mirum, which is something
01:02:02
Jesus did not do, and then after consecrating it, they added water, something Jesus didn't do.
01:02:07
Then they argued with each other about who was right and who was wrong, and all they had to go on was a misunderstanding on the origins of the mingled cup and a late 4th century novelty started by Ambrose.
01:02:18
And you think about what a seismic event this was in the history of the church,
01:02:24
East and West, you know, turning on their heels, walking away from each other, arguing over who's doing it right, and both of them were basing their arguments on a late 4th century novelty.
01:02:35
Prior to that, there was no evidence of a liturgical right. Nobody was arguing that Jesus had mixed the water with the wine himself at the table, but in ignorance and misunderstanding, what was introduced as a novelty in the late 4th century ended up causing, or at least being a significant factor in the cause of the split between East and West, because neither of them really understood the ancient practice of wine craft, and therefore they never understood what the early church fathers meant when they referred to a mingled cup.
01:03:04
Let me just ask a clarifying question. When you speak of the East, you're referring to what is known as Eastern Orthodoxy, right?
01:03:15
Yes, although they all consider themselves to be part of the same single church throughout those intervening centuries, it's not until the 11th century that there's a seismic shift and a split between them, and that's where you start seeing, well, we're
01:03:37
Eastern Orthodox, and you guys are, according to the Latin and Western right, and we're just gonna go our separate ways, and that's where...so
01:03:45
when you talk about Eastern Orthodoxy, we talk about the the Bible Answer Man converted to Eastern Orthodoxy.
01:03:52
He converted to the East, and that's...so he would have converted to what would be, you know, we sometimes describe it for the
01:04:03
Rome versus Constantinople, and he would have gone with Constantinople instead of with Rome, but prior to the 11th century, they were all...they
01:04:12
had different rituals, which you find often in the early churches that different congregations in different cities were doing things different ways, but here it was a very serious issue because it had to do with actually doing what
01:04:30
Christ instituted, and both of them were arguing that they were...neither one of them actually had it right, but they were willing to condemn each other and walk away, and I think that's very telling about the condition of the church at that time.
01:04:48
Would actually, one, not be doing something that Jesus did, and not following the instructions properly, and then condemning each other because they weren't following each other's oral man -made traditions, and all of it is based on a misunderstanding that can be traced to the latter part of the fourth century.
01:05:08
There wasn't this confusion beforehand. Everybody understood when we refer to a mingled cup, we're simply talking about a manufacturing process for wine, just like we're talking about a manufacturing process for bread.
01:05:21
Right, well, so does that wrap up this series?
01:05:27
Well, I'll just make a passing comment to wrap it up, but the reason we wanted to focus on this and to highlight the origins of the mixing of water with wine is that Roman Catholic apologists will point to the early church and say, look, they refer to a mingled cup.
01:05:43
When you go back and look through the references for the first 300 years, it's obvious that they're referring to a secular manufacturing process and not actually saying that Jesus mixed the water with wine himself, and to that end, the
01:05:55
Roman Catholic Encyclopedia is a little bit misleading. The early church tried to find reasons why they used a mingled cup.
01:06:03
Well, then they weren't looking for reasons. They knew exactly why they used a mingled cup. It's because that's how wine is made, and then the
01:06:10
Catholic Encyclopedia implies, the gospel accounts imply that Jesus used pure wine, and yet if you understand what pure wine is, that is that mirum, that is the beverage of uncivilized barbarians, no, the scripture does not imply that Jesus used pure wine, and yet that fundamental misunderstanding pretty much encapsulates the split between East and West.
01:06:32
You know, the West says, hey, Jesus must have mixed water with wine at the table, which is not what the scriptures say, and it's not what the early church father said, and in the
01:06:43
East, they say, well, we mix mirum because the gospel implies that Jesus used pure wine, and yet the gospel doesn't apply that at all, and the early church references to using a mingled cup doesn't mean that Jesus had blessed mirum and then added water to it.
01:06:58
Both sides were just, they just misunderstood the ancient practice of winecraft. They misunderstood the context in which so much of this was written, and they ended up accepting the novelty that Ambrose introduced.
01:07:11
They disagreed on when the water was supposed to be mixed with wine, but neither side understood that they had incorporated a tradition of man into the liturgy of Christ, and therefore were actually not doing what
01:07:22
Jesus did, even though they both insisted they were only following Christ's example. It's like that apologist that I referenced in episode one who said that when he sees the water mixed with wine in the mass, it reminds him of that scene from the
01:07:36
Scriptures. My answer is, what scene would that be? I can't find it anywhere in the
01:07:43
Scriptures. Just making stuff up. Yeah, they really did, and we'll talk about the significance of these things being introduced in the latter part of the fourth century, but you know, early in the church, that is for the first 300 years, they insisted on using red wine.
01:07:58
It was very important to use red wine so that it would be a proper figure or would signify
01:08:05
Christ's blood, but Roman Catholicism today doesn't require the use of red wine.
01:08:11
It just has to be wine. The early church allowed people to take the consecrated bread home with them and either eat it themselves or bring it to their friends.
01:08:21
Now Roman Catholicism, well, we don't allow anyone to do that for priests anymore because as the church became more aware of the real presence of Christ in the
01:08:29
Eucharist, only then did we stop letting people take the bread home with them, and of course, the funny thing is that if the early church wasn't aware of the real presence of Christ, then how can you say that the real presence of Christ is an apostolic tradition?
01:08:47
The early church isn't even aware of it, you know, so also the early church allowed people to take communion in the hand in the
01:08:57
Syril of Jerusalem in his catechism. This is from the middle of the 4th century.
01:09:05
He says, oh yes, yes, when you take the bread, you should touch it to your forehead and to your eyes before you eat it, you know, in other words, to just contemplate the significance of this symbol, this figure that has been used, and then he says, when you have the wine while it's still on your lips, you should touch your fingers to it, rub it in your fingers and on your eyes and on your brows and on your nose and on your ears, and just get a feel for just how significant it was that Jesus had become incarnate for us.
01:09:33
Well, do you think in Roman Catholicism today that they say take the bread and touch it to your head and to your nose and your ears, and then take the wine and touch it to your eyes and your ears and your nose, and make sure you get a good whiff of it.
01:09:48
You'd never get out of church if you did that, because they all line up and take it, and you'd be waiting there for five minutes for the next person, for the person in front of you to finish.
01:09:59
So you think about the significance of what the church actually did. The early church actually let people take the bread home with them and administer it to themselves.
01:10:07
They actually took it in their hands and sometimes touch it to their eyes and ears and nose, just to really get the full sensory experience of these figures that Christ used for his incarnation, and you talk about how
01:10:19
Cyprian of Carthage insisted that you use red wine in order to be a proper figure for Christ's blood, and these things that the early church actually did,
01:10:31
Roman Catholicism largely rejects saying that, well, those would be considered irreverent or unnecessary today, and in her wisdom the church has decided that you don't have to use red wine, and that the common people can't take home the bread with them, and they shouldn't be rubbing their face with it and rubbing their face with the wine, and they shouldn't be taking the bread home with them.
01:10:51
Only priests can do that. You think about the significance of the early church actually taught these things, and Roman Catholicism said, oh no, no, we would never think of handling the consecrated elements that way because they're
01:11:04
Christ's body and blood, and then you get to something like this where the church didn't actually teach a liturgical mix of the water with wine, and you say, we have to do it because the early church did it, and sometimes
01:11:15
I find myself laughing, and I don't mean any offense, or I don't mean to trivialize it, but we're condemned to hell for not doing this, according to what they think the early church did, and their whole argument is based on a misunderstanding, and Roman Catholicism portrays itself as the pillar and ground of truth, and yet they have perpetuated something that is just simply a fiction invented in the latter part of the 4th century, and they've imposed it with an iron fist, and that was part of the cause of the split between East and West, because neither side understood the origins of the practice of using a mingled cup.
01:11:56
It was simply a standard manufacturing process. It was by no means a liturgical step. It didn't become so until the latter part of the 4th century.
01:12:04
Well, I don't really have anything to add to that. I think you did an outstanding job. I want to say thank you for coming on.
01:12:11
This really does matter, because like you said, we're condemned to hell for rejecting this quote, apostolic right that is imposed by the
01:12:23
Roman Catholic system, and again, I just want to appeal to Roman Catholic friends, former
01:12:31
Roman Catholics, to point this out to their Roman Catholic friends, because this isn't something that a
01:12:38
Roman Catholic can just dismiss and say, well, I don't buy into that, because at that point your church condemns you to hell, and that matters, and so come join us on the
01:12:52
Protestant side. Well, I think that's a fair statement. We're told that we have to do this because of tradition.
01:13:01
Even Cyprian of Carthage didn't argue for an oral tradition. He argued for a written tradition, and the written tradition was use wine in the
01:13:10
Lord's Supper, or use the fruit of the vine. I don't think that's absolutely required to have alcohol in it at all.
01:13:16
In fact, the early church is just bread. It would figure
01:13:21
Christ's blood. So when you think about the claim of apostolic continuity that Roman Catholicism makes, to say we're the only ones that are still holding to the ancient traditions of the
01:13:34
Apostles, you know, Cyril of Jerusalem said that regarding the rubbing the bread and the wine on your face prior to consuming it, he said, you know, you have to hold fast to these traditions, you know, and so what does
01:13:49
Roman Catholicism do? They reject it. So we would never treat the consecrated elements that way.
01:13:55
In some ways it's funny. In a lot of ways it's very sad, but when you think about the actual institution of Christ and who is practicing it correctly, is it
01:14:05
Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, or Protestants? Yeah. And it's the
01:14:11
Protestants, and if you really want to join the ancient apostolic church that Jesus Christ himself founded and still practice, the group today that still practices what
01:14:22
Christ practiced and what he taught his Apostles, then you're gonna have to become Protestant, because Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism do not have it.
01:14:29
They've got the traditions of men, and those traditions, as we pointed out today, originate in the latter part of the fourth century, 300 years removed from the
01:14:36
Apostles. Man, that is so good. I'm so grateful that you're part of our podcast,
01:14:45
Tim. Well, okay, so if you have questions, comments, concerns, or anything like that, you can email us at semper .refermanda
01:14:54
.radio at gmail .com, or you can just leave a comment on the website underneath the episode, and with that, we're gonna go ahead and close out this episode and this series, and be looking forward to Tim Coffman coming back to talk about eschatology.
01:15:17
And once again, when we do eschatology, I'm pretty much gonna let
01:15:23
Tim take over the show at that time, too, because he's got some really good stuff on eschatology.
01:15:32
We're going through it right now with him, and he's explaining his views, and I'm in agreement with him.
01:15:40
I'm just fascinated by his position. Tim, should we say that we're a form of historic pre -mill?
01:15:50
Yeah, I think that it's fair to say that, and I think the thing is that we're gonna go from the
01:15:56
Scriptures and the record of historical fulfillments of prophecy, and everybody does that.
01:16:04
I think everybody would claim that. We're gonna walk through what we believe and why we believe it.
01:16:10
I'm excited. Yeah, it is. Alright, so we'll go ahead and close out today's episode.
01:16:19
If you got anything to say, semper .refermanda .radio at gmail .com, and I hope you all have a blessed week.
01:16:26
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