Then, shall we discuss 4 and 5 (Im talking about the 5 questions which are meant to show the flaws with memorialist framework)
On John 6:63, “The Flesh Profits Nothing”, and Docetic Implications
In John 6:63, “The flesh profits nothing; it is the Spirit who gives life. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life”. Remember Flesh=sarx term. Christ unequivocally refers to (b) human, fallen, carnal understanding devoid of divine illumination (c.f John 3:6, 8:15, Rom 7:5-6, 8:5-13), not (a) His own Eucharistic flesh, which He has just commanded to be consumed for eternal life (John 6:53-58). Interpreting as (a) engenders a grotesque self-contradiction: Christ would be instituting a sacrament only to immediately nullify its efficacy..whaaatttt…
The term sarx in Johannine usuage is multivalent: In John 1:14 it denotes Christ’s assumed human nature, redeptive and substantive; here in 6:63 it shifts to anthropological connotation, signifying the unregenerate human mindset scandalized by divine revelation (John 6:60-61), as paralleled in Pauline antithesis between sarx (fleshly weakness) and pneuma (Spirit’s Empowerment in Rom 8:1-11). Jesus corrects a crude, cannibalisitic misapprehension by affirming a spiritual mode of reception and thats sacramental, mediated by the Holy Spirit’s vivifying power, not carnal literalism devoid of faith. This aligns with the discoruse’s progression from metaphorical “bread of life” to ontological realism (alēthēs brōsis, “true food,” v. 55), where Spirit enables participation without reducing it to symbols.
The verse is no negation but an affirmation of sacramental ontology: the Spirit acutalizes the words’ performative power (John 6:63), transforming reception into mystical union (John 6:56). Memorialism’s misreading, eqauting sarc with Christ’s flesh, necessitates the heretical conclusion that the Incarnate Word’s humanity “profits nothing” eroding hypostatic union where divine and human natures coexist without confusion. This drifts into Docetism, the very heresy John combats (1 John 4:2-3, 2 John 7) by implying Christ’s flesh is illusory or non-salvific, or Monophysitism, absorbing humanity into an abstract spirituality. Furthermore, it impoverishes pneumatology: *without substantial presence, the Spirit’s role devolves to subjective inspiration, isn’t that Montanist enthusiasm without ecclesial sacramentality?
5.On the Incarnation, Life-Giving Flesh and Scandal of John 6
The Incarnation wherein “the Word became flesh” is not a static event but the inaugrating act of divine economy, culminating in Christ’s Crucifixion, resurrection and ascension, transforing Him into “a life-giving spirit” whose glorified humanity imparts deification (2 Peter 1:4). To bestow this life-giving reality upon the disciples, Christ proffers the most profound, intimate and corporeal mode conceivable:
“Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53)
A command whose literal-sacramental force generates unparalleled scandal…
If not substantial, what conceivable meaning could Christ’s words bear that would provoke such visceral offence? Symbolic “belief” or remembrance lacks the abhorrence of apparent cannibalism or blood ingestion, taboos evoking ritual uncleanness and covenant breach. The escalation to Trogon, a base, animalistic verb in Greek literature as in Aristophanes’ satirical usage, intensifies corporeal realism, mirroring the Passover lamb’s mandatory consumption, yet transcending it in the New Covenant. Jesus’ refusal to mitigate and the disciples’ desertion underscore the stakes:
This is not abstract faith but participatory union in Christ’s deified humanity
The scandal parallels the Incarnation’s own offence, where God’s enfleshment deifies human categories; Memorialism dilutes this to palatable symbolism, rendering the Jews’ reaction disproportionate and Jesus’ discourse redundant (why not halt at John 6:35?). Deeper still, it undermines soteriology: without real communion in Christ’s flesh, salvation becomes gnostic knowledge rather than ontological transformation, echoing Apollinarianism (denying Christ’s full humanity as salvific) or Eutychianism (blurring natures, reducing flesh to ethereal symbol). Eschatologically, Memorialism’s shortfalls: Eucharist prefigures the heavenly banquet, where symbolic meals cannot nourish the resurrected body; instead, it must be the foretaste of glorified matter.
( I have talked about 1, 2 and 3 in the above post)
Peace
Sam