ISAAC AND THE MASS
A review of The Eucharist's Long Shadow across the Bible by James Seghers (This Rock, January 1999)
Almost every month I have an opportunity to read This Rock, the magazine published by Catholic Answers, who like to be known as the premiere Roman Catholic apologetic group in America. The articles reflect the type of know-it-all attitude; Christians understand the poverty of human knowledge when compared with the simplest scripture. By God's grace and through His grace alone, we have access to the greatest source of information in the world (the Bible) and the greatest Source of Inspiration and Interpretation in the world (the Holy Spirit).
The words printed in large letters on page 21 of the January 1999 issue caught my attention: The Eucharist's Long Shadow across the Bible. I have always known that the Catholic Church teaches that when Melchizedek brought forth bread and wine it was a symbol of the Mass, even though the only other times bringing forth bread and wine is mentioned in the Old Testament it was merely because someone was hungry. Abraham must have been famished after his escapade with Chedorlaomer. As you read the text, there is nothing to suggest sacrifice.
But the Bible does say, "Melchizedek . . . brought forth bread and wine." He is spoken of in other scriptures as a definite type of Christ. But does this typology fit the Catholic concept? Just as the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper is a picture of a most ordinary effort of man being sacramentalized into a memorial of Christ's death, Melchizedek's bringing forth bread and wine to slake the hunger and thirst of Abraham can only be seen, in type, as applying to the priestly work of Jesus Christ in His resurrected state.
It is the Christ Who died, Who lives, and is coming again that is memorialized in the Lord's Supper. (A future event is memorialized because the utter faithfulness of Him Who promised to come makes it an established fact.) Melcizedek presents only the memorials of a sacrifice, bread and wine. Although offered before the time, they are nonetheless valid since Christ was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. "After the order of Melchizedek" (Hebrews 6:20) refers to the unending duration of Christ's high priestly ministry. We are saved to the uttermost because He ever liveth (Hebrews 7:25).
The Aaronic priesthood was often interrupted by death. Christ is a priest after the order of Melchizedek, as King of righteousness, King of peace, and in the endlessness of His priesthood. The sacrifice was once for all (Hebrews 7:27, 10:12,14) but His High Priestly office will continue as long as believers need this ministry.
We see here the three "It is finished" statements of Christ. In John 17:4, He spoke of having finished the eartly ministry spoken of in John 1:18 of revealing God to man. In John 19:30, no longer on the earth but lifted up from the earth on the cross, indicated the sacrifice was complete. In Revelation 21:6 He Who said, "It is finished" now says, "It is done." The High Priestly ministry, conducted by Our Lord before the throne of God, is no longer necessary since "the tabernacle of God is with men" (Revelation 21:3).
Leaving obvious eisegesis (the bringing of a developed doctrine to the Bible for proof) about Melchizedek, we come to a real stretch of the theological imagination. We read, "In God's request that Abraham sacrifice his son Isaac (Genesis 22:2) we find the second of two types (of the Eucharist) in the book of Genesis."
Naturally I was interested to see how this could be wrung out of this text, and the direction they were headed was featured in large print on page 22, "In a profound sense, the entire Old Testament was a preparation for the Lord's Supper."
"The Lord's Supper" is a Roman Catholic ecumenical euphemism for "the Sacrifice of the Mass," but it seemed, as I read on, that they were going to try to provide links between the offering of Isaac and Calvary, without having specific reference to the Mass.
This is precisely what they tried to do, and in doing it, they rendered the entire Catholic argument null and void. Let me explain.
They drew the normal types from the story of Isaac (which you can read in most evangeical commentaries) - the fact that Isaac and Christ had so many similarities. Both were sons of promise and called "only begotten son." Both carried wood up the same mountain, consented to endure death, etc. Probably you are familiar with all these types of Christ in the life of Isaac.
The question, which was never addressed, was what does this have to do with the Mass (unless one has already come to the assumption that Calvary is the Mass and the Mass is Calvary [which is clearly eisegesis]).
It is extremely interesting to see exactly what the Bible says about the scenario. It is what God has written in His Word, not our preconceived notions, which count. In Genesis 22:9, Abraham said to his servants that he and Isaac would go up the mountain and come back again. This was an indication of the fact that Abraham really believed God would raise up Isaac from the dead after he had sacrificed him.
But after the sacrifice and Isaac's reprieve, we read in Genesis 22:19, "Abraham returned to his young men." We can assume that proabably Isaac came down with Abraham, but Isaac, the type of Christ, is not mentioned again in the Bible until chapter 24 when he receives the bride Abraham's servant brought to him from a far country.
Perhaps our Catholic friends will say this is the place where the type, being human, fails. It would seem to the Bible believing Christian that God goes out of His way to keep Isaac from view in the narrative for a definite reason.
Before God worked out (if that is a correct way to term God's foreordination) the Old Testament types of His Blessed Son, He knew a monstrous counterfeit would one day arise to claim that the actual presence of Christ would be evident continuously throughout the Church Age.
Not only did God clearly state the truth of the finished work of His Son in the pages of the New Testament, He even built this truth into a type which, according to the author of the article we are reviewing, is one of the four great events pictured in the Passover, which they believe to be fulfilled in the Mass.
Great emphasis is also placed upon the Passover, and the shedding of the blood of the Lamb, which, they say, were a type, and that "foreshadowed by it was the Blood of the Lamb of God - the Eucharist."
The deliverance from Egypt was not specifically because a lamb had been slain, it was because the blood of the slain lamb was applied. The Mass, being an "unbloody sacrifice," can never be the fulfillment of the Passover. The Jewish Passover meal was a remembrance of the applied blood, but did not make the shed blood efficacious. It is only efficacions when it is applied, and there is no mention of blood being applied in the Old Testament Pasover celebrations.
According to Mr. Seghers, "the purpose of the figure or type was to prepare for the event, and the purpose of the sacrament is to continue the event by actualizing it in Jesus' mystical body, the Church."
We have no problem understanding that the type looks forward to the event, but we have to be clear about the event itself, and whether there is scriptural basis for its being continued.
One of the God-ordained rituals that looked forward to the event was the offering of Old Testament sacrifices. God plainly tells us of these in Hebrews 10:11, "And every priest standeth daily offering oftentimes the same sacrifices which can never take away sins." Primarily this has to do with OldTestament sacrifice, and we see the event to which these sacrifices pointed - "but this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever sat down on the right hand of God . . ." Hebrews 10:12.
One who would be a presumed follower of "this man" - Jesus Christ, has the option. One can follow the scriptural pattern both by type (Isaac) and by actual biblical teaching that clearly teaches the work is once for all and cannot be added to, thus putting the Lord's Supper, the memorial, in its true position.
Or it can revert to the Old Testament concept of a continued sacrifice, which, the Bible assures us, can never take away sins. A clear understanding of the roles played by various religious concepts will help us to understand this more clearly.
We will consider five events, and consider them not by human Tradition, but by the Word of God.
The first is the actual Passover (Exodus 12). We see a lamb slain, and its shed blood delivering the Hebrews when is was properly applied. God did not say, "When I see the carcass of the Lamb I will pass over you" but "When I see the blood." We also see at the original Passover, the bread was not eaten - it was still in the kneading troughs of the Israelites.
The second is the commemoration of the Passover. There was blood spilled, but the emphasis of this Passover was the unleavened bread, that resulted because of Israel's having had such a hasty delivered from Egypt. No blood was sprinkled on the doorposts, and this Passover, being a rememberance, had no salvific value.
Then we see the actual sacrifice of Christ. The Lamb has been slain, but deliverance comes when that shed blood is applied. Having theological knowledge about Calvary does not bring salvation; the blood must be applied.
In the Lord's Supper that follows as an ordinance of the Church, we see bread and unfermented wine symbolizing the perfect Saviourhood of Christ, yet salvation is not wrought by partaking of the elements. Salvation is not the result of the Lord's Supper; the Lord's Supper is the result of salvation.
In the Sacrifice of the Mass, where Christ is supposed to be immolated (sacrificed or slaughtered), there is no blood shed, and without the shedding of blood is no remission of sin (Hebrews 9:22). No one can come to the Mass already sure of salvation, for the very presence of the mortal sin of presumption would deny him the opportunity to partake of the "Body and Blood." However, since there is no blood shed, there is no blood to be applied, for if it were properly applied, there is no more necessity of an offering for sin.
Where remission of (sins) is, there is no more offering for sin (Hebrews 10:18).
Mr. Seghers emphasized what he calls the "marital-covenantal theme" inaugurated in Genesis and culminated in the marriage feast of the Lamb (Revelation 21). For this to apply to Roman Catholicism, we would have to accept the Roman Catholic Church as the Bride of Christ. Since the Catholic Church is the totality of its members, whom the leaders of the Church do not accept as being universally eligible for Heaven, we have some members of the "Bride of Christ" going to the Lake of Fire, the completed place for the unsaved..
Roman Catholic apologists like to refer to the parable of the tares in excusing the fact that some validly baptized members of the Roman Catholic Church will not successfully make it through the general judgment. They fail to read that "the field is the world" not "the field is the church."
The blood bought church is a church that, in totality, He will present to His Father faultless with exceeding joy, having endured the Cross for the joy that was set before Him - the joy of the salvation of His elect church, without spot or wrinkle.
We deplore the spots and wrinkles we see in ourselves are thankful that our salvation is in Him. Positionally we stand where one day we will stand in practice - ushered into His Glory.
To sum it all up, Isaac is a type of Christ, but Isaac is not a type of the Eucharist which still is, as proclaimed by John Knox in the streets of Edinburgh, Scotland, "a blasphemy."
For the sake of lost souls in this system, but even more importantly, for the honor of your Blessed Saviour, proclaim to all that His work is finished. Having been raised from the dead (as Isaac was in figure), He is in Glory interceding for and awaiting the coming of His glorious bride (Isaac's Rebecca), which is being sought out by the Holy Spirit (Isaac's Eleazar). We will be brought from a far country to join Him in everlasting bliss and salvation (Sarah's tent for Isaac and Rebecca), through the blood that was shed - and then applied to our hearts.