Johannine scholarship has never managed to settle the
discussion about the role of the Eucharist in John 6. Is it faith
that provides eternal life, in which case the ‘eating’ of the savior’s
body is seen as metaphorical language? Or, is it the consumption
of the body, which must then be a reference to the Eucharist? By
the aid of Greimas’ figure of verification, the article demonstrates
how John 6 evaluates different kinds of food as either trivial, false,
secret or true. The authors of this article engage recent Danish
scholarship on John’s Gospel and demonstrate how, in a fruitful
way, the semiotic tradition may be combined with the philosophical
analyses that have focused on John’s relationship with Stoicism.
The article, thus, concludes that the consumption of the true and
saving food refers to the reception of the spirit. However, apart
from the direct infusion of the spirit into the disciples at the end of
the Gospel (John 20:22), the spirit comes in various secret forms:
either as words, while Jesus is still around, or as bread through
the Epiclesis in the early Eucharistic ritual, when – through the
resurrection – the Savior has been transformed into his glorified,
spiritual body.