What you Read is What you Get: Taking the Gospel Statements of Jesus at Face Value.

If the simple one sentence statements of Jesus (as recorded in the four Gospel accounts) can not be taken at face value, the question must be asked: What good are they? Moreover, at just what point are these clear and simple statements (if not taken at face value) make Jesus as a liar?

Lets look at a well know example; a situation where Jesus makes such a clear and simple statements when eating and drinking with his disciples before his death as recorded in all four Gospel accounts: Matt. 26: 26-29 = Mark 14: 22 -25 = Luke 22: 15 – 20 and John 6: 51 – 58:

Of the bread Jesus emphatically states: “This is my body.”
Of the wine Jesus emphatically states: “This is my blood.”

These two statements are not given either as parables or as symbols; they are (as understood in grammatical terms), used as simple demonstrative limiting adjective sentences of possession. Thus, Jesus’ statements are clear and simple; no parables or symbols mentioned or implied.

Now before Protestant Christians claim that Jesus did not know what he was talking about and that he MUST be understood as using metaphors or hyperboles, let see just how the oldest Christian Church – the Roman Catholic Church – understands these Gospel statements when used doing the consecration of the Eucharist as defined at a major church council:

The Council of Trent declared subject to the ecclesiastical penalty of anathema anyone who "denieth, that, in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist, are contained truly, really, and substantially, the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently the whole Christ; but saith that He is only therein as in a sign, or in figure, or virtue" and anyone who "saith, that, in the sacred and holy sacrament of the Eucharist, the substance of the bread and wine remains conjointly with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and denieth that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the Body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the Blood - the species only of the bread and wine remaining - which conversion indeed the Catholic Church most aptly calls Transubstantiation".

Furthermore, if the Catholic dogma is indeed just plainly mistaken and simply wrong in its understanding of Jesus (as I’m sure many non-Catholics Protestants are sure to argue in their forth coming comments) then - may I ask - just where and just when are the terms Heaven, Hell and Salvation not to be understood as simple metaphors, hyperboles or parables? Or, to put it another way, at what point does Jesus make logical sense for the simple believer who wants to take him at his word?