Heinrich Schmid · 63 of 78

§ 55. (2.) The Lord’s Supper. · Part 1

§ 55. (2.) The Lord’s Supper.

As in Baptism, so in the Holy Supper, we distinguish essential nature, form, and design.

1. ITS ESSENTIAL NATURE. — This is expressed in the words of the institution, to which alone we are referred; [1] and these declare, if we interpret and understand them agreeably to the language (and we dare not adopt any other mode, [2]), that we are to partake therein not only of bread and wine, but at the same time also of the body and blood of Christ. [3] According to this, bread and wine are only the external visible elements through which the body and blood of Christ are communicated, and the Holy Supper is the sacred act in which this takes place. “The Sacrament of the Altar is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, in and under bread and wine, instituted and commanded by the Word of Christ to be eaten and drank by us Christians.” CAT. MAJ. (V, 8). [4] But, in order most distinctly to state the meaning of such a participation of the body and blood of Christ, we add:

(a) That, as by bread and wind real and true bread an real wine are understood, so also, by the body and blood of Christ, the real and true body and the real and true blood of Jesus Christ, as He possesses both since His glorification, must be understood; [5] and, as the bread and wine, so also this body and this blood of Christ are really and truly present. [6]

(b) That in the same sense, and in the same manner, in which we partake of bread and wine, so also we partake of the body and blood of Christ; so that therefore in both cases the participation is not to be understood in a metaphorical, but in a literal sense. As there is therefore an oral and real participation of bread and wine, so there is also of the body and blood of Christ; [7] but yet so that, in the mode of the participation, the same differences which naturally exist between bread and wine and body and blood are here also to be observed, according to which, therefore, our mouth receives the purely material elements of bread and wine in a different way from that in which it receives the glorified body and glorified blood of Christ. [8]

Inasmuch as, according to this, we cannot partake of bread and wine in the Holy Supper without at the same time partaking of the body and blood of Christ, and inasmuch as we can partake of the body and blood of Christ only through the medium of the participation of the bread and wine, we perceive from this, that in the Holy Supper a peculiar union of the body and blood of Christ takes place with the bread and wine. [9] But we are not able to describe this union, according to its essential nature, for it is unique in its character and incomprehensible; hence we must limit ourselves to removing false representations of it. It would be a false representation of it if we believed in a change of one substance into the other, as the Romish Church does in the dogma of transubstantiation, which is altogether a false doctrine, for the Holy Scriptures declare both that the bread and wine, and that the body and blood, are present in the Holy Supper; or, if we believed in the combination of both substances into one; or, if we thought that this union were one extending beyond the Lord’s Supper and continually existing; or, if we maintained that the body and blood were somehow locally included in the bread and wine; or, finally, if we held that this union is of the same nature as that between the divine and the human nature of Christ. [10]

2. THE FORM. — In the bread and wine the body and blood of Christ are communicated to us only when the mode prescribed by the Lord in this solemnity is perfectly observed. there must be, therefore: (a) The consecration. (b) The consecrated elements must be really distributed and partaken of; for only in these cases do bread and wine cease to be common and ordinary elements, and at the same time the body and blood of Christ are comprehended in and by them. [11] Where all this is done, there also the Holy Supper is a real Sacrament, and neither the faith of the communicant [12] nor the state of mind of the officiating minister [13] is a condition of the real presence of the body and blood of Christ.

3. THE DESIGN. — According to the express command of the Lord, Christians are to partake of the Holy Supper in remembrance of Him. [14] The believing participation will have the effect that the communicants, with the body and blood of Christ, will receive also all the benefits which Christ procured by the offering of His body on the cross. All the benefits, then, which Christ procured for us by His death, are communicated to us in the Holy Supper, [15] but yet in such manner that faith is presupposed as already existing in those who partake of the Holy Supper; and therefore the effect of the Supper does not consist in the production, so much as in the more thorough establishment and confirmation and more cordial appropriation of those benefits. [16] The most prominent result is: (a) The sealing of the Gospel promise of the remission of sins, and the confirmation of our faith, for no surer and more certain pledge can be given us than the body and blood of Christ; (b) The ingrafting into Christ and spiritual nourishment to eternal life, for it is in the Supper that the closest union with Christ takes place. [17] In the participation of the Holy Supper, Christians acknowledge themselves as belonging to one Head, and thus the Holy Supper, at the same time, serves to strengthen the bond of love among them. [18]

[1] HOLL. (1107): “The norm of the whole doctrine of the Sacrament of the Eucharist is given in the words of the institution, which are found in Matt. 26:26; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19; 1 Cor. 11:23. The Capernaitic discourse of Christ, John 6:26 sq., is by no means the norm or foundation of knowing or establishing this doctrine.”

CHMN. (de c. Dom., 9): “As some dogmas of the Church and single articles of faith have, as it were, their proper foundation in certain particular passages of Scripture where they are expressly taught and explained, so that their true and genuine meaning may be properly sought and surely gathered from those passages; so, beyond controversy, the correct doctrine of the Lord’s Supper has its peculiar place and proper foundation in the words of the institution. All confess and yield this to the words, but when the thing spoken of comes to be treated, there is plainly a difference. For all the Sacramentarians, however many there may be, do not derive what they wish to think and believe concerning the Lord’s Supper from the words of the institution, understood literally and simply as they stand; but they take their opinion from other passages of the Scriptures, most of which say nothing about the Lord’s Supper, each one choosing other passages, according to some analogy of his own, as his fancy may dictate. And often they gather from other Scripture passages what they wish to believe on this subject, then at last they go to the words of the institution, and then comes the tug and toil of intruding upon the words of the institution, by a figurative and violent interpretation, their opinion elsewhere conceived. And thus among those arguments which the Sacramentarians accumulate to establish and confirm their opinion of the Lord’s Supper, the words of the institution have properly no place. But when, in refutation, those things which seem to oppose their asserted opinion are to be overthrown, then at last these words are heard, viz., ‘this is my body;’ yet so as to signify, not that which they declare, but so as to be compelled to serve a presumptuous opinion derived elsewhere.”

[2] FORM. CONC. (Epit. VII, 7): “We believe, etc., that the words of the Testament of Christ are not to be taken in any other sense than as the words sound to the very letter.” HOLL. (1111): “We must not depart from the obvious meaning of the words of the Holy Supper, but they are to be understood most simply and literally as they stand. Note: We do not here speak of all the words of the institution, but of the substantial and constitutive words: ‘This is my body, this is my blood.’”

BR. (703) very briefly condenses the proof as follows: “That these words of Christ are to be taken in their native force and intention, and that we are not to pervert them from their proper signification to a figure, appears: (1) From the common and natural rule of interpretation, which retains the literal signification, unless urgent necessity compel us to adopt a figurative one; which rule is indeed most solicitously to be observed in regard to supernatural subjects and those which pertain to faith. (2) That when the three Evangelists and Paul, at different times and places, speak of the institution of the Lord’s Supper, not one of them ever intimates that the words have a figurative meaning, or that we are to believe that we eat, not the body, but a sign of the body; a that we drink, not the blood, but a sign of the blood. (3) From the harmony of 1 Cor. 11:27, 28, and 10:16. In the former passage the unworthy communicant is said to be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord, received in an unworthy or contumelious manner, because the bread and wine are the communion of the body and blood of Christ, as is taught in the latter passage. But this communion is not a mere significance, but a real union. (4) From the nature of testaments, in which literalness and perspicuity of language are particularly required; and least of all is it to be supposed that Christ, in His testament, has either designedly or imprudently given occasion of dispute and strife by figurativeness of language.” Others derive an additional argument from the absurdity of the figurative meaning. FORM. CONC. (Sol. Dec., VII, 43-60.)

[3] The literal sense is thus explained by HOLL. (1108): “In the former proposition (this is my body) the demonstrative pronoun this denotes the entire sacramental complex, consisting of everything in the Sacrament composed of the wine and the blood of Christ, mysteriously united.” (Inasmuch as the pronoun this is employed with regard to both the bread and the body, the Romish doctrine of a transubstantiation is excluded.) “The substantive verb is connects the predicate with the subject, and denotes that that which is offered in the Holy Supper is really and truly not only bread, but also the body of Christ.”

The meaning of the words then is this: “This which I offer to you, which you are to receive and eat, is not only bread, but it is besides my body. This which I offer to you, and which you are to receive and drink, is not only wine, but besides it is my blood.” Or, as it is most frequently expressed: “In, with, and under the bread and wine, Christ presents His true body and blood to be truly and substantially eaten and drank by us.” This mode of expression is confirmed by the FORM. CONC. (Sol. Dec., VII, 35) thus: “Besides those phrases used by Christ and Paul [viz., that of the body of Christ], we employ other forms of speech also, e.g., when we say that the body of Christ is present and presented under the bread; this we do for weighty reasons. For, first, we use these phrases in order to reject Romish transubstantiation. In the next place, we wish also in this way to teach the sacramental union of the substance of the unchanged bread with the body of Christ. In the same way, the passage, John 1:14, ‘The Word was made flesh,’ is repeated and declared in other analogous passages, ex. gr., Col. 2:9; Acts 10:38; 2 Cor. 5:19. These passages, besides the one quoted from John, repeat and declare, viz., that by the incarnation the divine essence was not changed into the human nature, but that the two natures are personally united without confusion.” Still another mode of expression is this: “This, which is exhibited through the medium of bread, is the body of Christ.”

[4] HUTT. (Loc. Th., 230): “The Lord’s Supper is a Sacrament of the New Testament instituted by Christ, in which the true body and true blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, in and under bread and wine, is truly distributed to all who eat and drink, and the promise of grace is applied and sealed to every believer.”

KG. (248): “The Lord’s Supper is the second New Testament Sacrament, in which God, to-day, by the hand of the regular minister of the Church, through the medium of the consecrated bread, truly and really presents to the communicants His true and substantial body to be eaten by the bodily mouth, yet in a supernatural way; and through the medium of the consecrated wine, He truly and really presents to the communicants His true and substantial blood, to be drank by the bodily mouth, yet in a manner hyperphysical and unknown to us; and by this He confirms their faith and seals to them His covenant grace, to the praise of His goodness and wisdom, and the salvation of those who partake.”

In the Scriptures this Sacrament is called the Lord’s Supper, δειπνον κυριακον, 1 Cor. 11:20; the table of the Lord τραπεζα του κυροου, 1 Cor. 10:21; communion, κοινωνια, 1 Cor. 10:16; the new covenant, καινη διαθηκη, Luke 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25. In the writings of the Church Fathers, the eucharist, ευχαριστια; a religious service, συναξις; a love-feast, αγαπη; a liturgy, λειτουργια; a sacrifice, θυσια; an offering, προσφορα; a mystery, μυστηριον. In the writings of the Latin Fathers, the Sacrament of the altar — the mass — missa.

The Dogmaticians accordingly distinguish between the celestial and the terrestrial matter in the Lord’s Supper. HOLL. (21116): “The terrestrial matter of the Lord’s Supper is partly bread; in regard to its substance genuine. It is not important, however, in regard to its quantity, whether it be more or less, or whether it be round or oblong; in regard to its quality, whether it be unfermented or fermented; in regard to the kind of grain, whether it be wheat, rye, or barley. It is partly wine; in regard to its substance, genuine; but it is of no account whether it be red or white, pure or somewhat diluted with water. The celestial matter is the true and substantial body of Christ, and also the true and substantial blood of Christ.”

[5] CHMN. (d. c. D., 14): “When, in speaking of the bread in the Lord’s Supper, we say that it is the body of Christ, the word bread has and retains its literal signification. And when to the word body is added the phrase, ‘which is given for you,’ we are compelled to take it in no other than in its literal and natural meaning, namely, of that substance of Christ’s human nature, which was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, and suspended on the cross.” HOLL. (1118): “It is readily inferred that in the Eucharist with the consecrated bread there is given us to eat not a typical body, or a figurative one, such as was the body of the paschal lamb, so far as it shadowed forth and prefigured the body of Christ; not a mystical body, which is the Church, Eph. 1:23; not the sign of a body, for that was not crucified for us; but the true and personal body of Christ, belonging to the Son of God, and therefore full of God, and majestic . . . . It is the now glorified and most glorious body of Christ. For, although we always partake of the crucified and dead body of Christ, as to its merit, yet it is now no longer in that condition; but we partake of it in the state in which it now is. It is not therefore to be circumscribed by the laws. of nature.”

[6] FORM. CONC. (Sol. Dec., VII, 9): “It is taught, that in the Holy Supper the true body and blood of Christ are truly present, and distributed and received under the form of bread and wine.”

GRH. (X, 165): “After it is demonstrated that the words of the Holy Supper are to be taken κατα το ρητον, according to their genuine, literal and natural meaning, the opinion of our churches concerning the true, real, and substantial presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Supper cannot be doubtful or uncertain, since it immediately flows from the words of the institution κατα ρητον, and taken literally.” This presence is called sacramental (ib., 168), “because the celestial object in this mystery is bestowed and presented to us through the medium of external sacramental symbols; it is called true and real, to exclude the figment of a figurative, imaginary, and representative presence; substantial, to exclude the subterfuge of our opponents concerning the merely efficacious presence of the body and blood of Christ in this mystery; mystical, supernatural, and incomprehensible, because in the mystery the body and blood of Christ are present, not in a worldly manner, but in a mystical, supernatural, and incomprehensible manner. Some of our theologians have called it a corporeal presence, but only with respect to the object and not at all to the mode; they wish to say by this, that not only the virtue and efficacy, but the substance itself of the body and blood of Christ is present in the Holy Supper; for they oppose this word to spiritual presence as it is defined by their opponents, but by no means wish to say thereby that the body of Christ is present in a corporeal and quantitative manner.”

In order to reply to the charge, that the Lutheran Dogmaticians had only inferred the doctrine of this presence from their doctrine of the person of Christ, HUTT. (Loc. c., p. 716) remarks: “We must consider, that in this controversy concerning the Eucharist, not one, but two different questions are mooted. One of these is concerning the will and intention of Christ: ‘Whether He wished really to present His body to be eaten in the Supper and His blood to be drank, and so to be most closely present by His body and blood in the Eucharistic bread and wine?’ In regard to this Luther maintained, that we agree with him, that beyond all doubt the decision of this question is to be sought nowhere else than in the article concerning the Lord’s Supper. The other question is concerning the power of Christ: ‘Whether He be really able to be present, by His body and blood, in all places where this Sacrament is dispensed?’ In regard to this, he must be stupid who maintains that the decision is to be sought anywhere else than in the article concerning the person of Christ.” If, namely, in the article just mentioned, the possibility, at least, of an omnipresence of Christ was proved, in general (comp. § 33, note 20, at the end), then nothing of consequence can any longer be objected to this mode of special presence which takes place in the Lord’s Supper.

The Dogmaticians take pains to distinguish carefully between this kind of presence and other kinds of presence. Luther, already, made three distinctions of this kind. Comp. FORM. CONC. (Sol. Dec., Vii, 99): “Christ could be anywhere: first, in a comprehensible and corporeal manner, which He employed when He sojourned corporeally upon earth, when He was quantitatively circumscribed in a certain place . . . . Secondly, He can be present anywhere in another, incomprehensible and spiritual manner, so as not to be circumscribed by a place, but to penetrate all creatures, by virtue of His own perfectly free will; just as my sight penetrates the air, or the light penetrates the water, and is in these things, and yet is not circumscribed by a place . . . This manner of being present Christ employed when in His resurrection, He came forth from the closed and sealed tomb, . . . and thus He is also in the bread and wine of the Supper . . . . Besides, He can be anywhere present in a divine and celestial manner, according to which He is one person with God. In this way creatures are much more nearly present to Him and more easily penetrated than according to the second kind of presence.” In addition to the distinction made between the presence assumed in the Lord’s Supper and the general presence (by virtue of which Christ, the God-man, is illocally present to all creatures), QUEN. adds also the following distinctions (IV, 193): “We are not inquiring (1) concerning the glorious presence, by which He is present in heaven, in a peculiar manner, among angels and saints; nor (2) concerning the hypostatic presence, by which the λογος is everywhere near to His assumed flesh, and this in turn near to Him; nor (3) concerning the spiritual presence (operative or virtual), i.e., whether Christ be present in the Holy Supper effectually or operatively, as the sun is present to us through light and heat; (4) nor is the question, whether the body and blood of Christ be present in the Holy Supper through a sign, figure, or image of Him; nor (5) does the question concern the Holy Supper that is celebrated in heaven; nor, finally, (6) concerning a presence through apprehension, through faith soaring to heaven; but the question is: Whether the body and blood of Christ, in the administration of the Supper, be so present in their own substance, that with the distributed bread there is at the same time given the very substance of the body of Christ, and in the presented cup there is at the same time presented that very blood which was poured out for us upon the altar of the cross?” This is maintained. The presence, however, is “not physical, local, and circumscriptive, such as belongs to natural bodies,” but a “hyperphysical or supernatural (which we cannot recognize by natural perception).” HOLL. (1120) distinguishes still further a double method of the hyperphysical presence: “Definitive presence is that of a being which is present somewhere, without the local occupation of space. In this way angels are present, who, because they are spiritual essences, cannot be measured by any interval of space. This definitive mode of being present will be common to our bodies also, in the life to come. This method Christ also employed when He came forth through the sepulchral stone from the tomb, etc. In this method, we may rightly conclude, the body of Christ is present also in the elemental bread, in the administration of the Lord’s Supper; although there is, besides this, also a sacramental union of the bread with the body of Christ, which depends not precisely or simply upon that definitive mode of the presence, but upon a special divine promise. The repletive presence is omnipresence, which belongs to God alone, per se and essentially, and to the human nature of Christ by virtue of its union with the divine, and personally.”

Other erroneous conceptions are guarded against by CAL. (IX, 307), as follows: “We maintain that the body and blood of Christ are present in the Supper; not, indeed, through μετουοια, or by substantial transmutation, as the Papists hold; nor by συνουσια, or consubstantiation, which the Calvinists calumniously charge upon us; nor by local inclusion, namely, impanation, as flesh is in a meat-pie and invination, as they are accustomed to charge against us; nor in the way of a descent from heaven and from the Right Hand of God, to be followed again by an ascent o heaven and to the Right Hand of God.” . . .

The objection urged by the Zwinglians against this presence, viz.: “If the body of Christ be present at the same time in Heaven, and upon earth in the Lord’s Supper, it necessarily follows that it is not a true and human body, for such majesty can be attributed to God alone, but the body of Christ is not at all capable of it,” is set aside by the doctrine of the Communicatio Idiomatum (Genus III), to the fuller development of which the Lutheran Church was led by these very objections on the part of the Reformed. (Comp. FORM. CONC., VIII, De Persona Christi.) QUEN. (IV, 200) replies to this objection: “There is no contradiction; the body of Christ is finite, and the same is substantially present everywhere (and especially in the Lord’s Supper) without any extension and division. Both these statements agree with the Scriptures; both are to be believed, nor is the one to be opposed to the other. The axiom which our adversaries here usually bring up against us, viz., ‘a natural and finite body cannot be at one and the same time in many places,’ avails only in so far as a natural mode of presence is concerned, and is therefore incorrectly applied to articles of mere faith, or is rather used in opposition to the words of Christ. And if the human nature of Christ, without any prejudice to its reality and finiteness, could be assumed into the infinite person of the Logos, why, therefore, may not the body of Christ be substantially present everywhere (and especially in the Lord’s Supper) without any prejudice to its reality? Place is an accident; it does not constitute a body, but is accidentally consequent upon some other accident, for instance, quantity, for the explanation of which no actual limitation is required, but for which the quality of being limitable is of itself sufficient. And accurately speaking, it is not locality, but locability, not the being in a place, but the ability to be in a place, that its the quality of a physical body. The multiplication of the limit of the presence is not the multiplication of the subject that is present; the variety of the mode is not the multiplication of the thing. The same Christ is present in the Eucharist without the multiplication of Himself, as the same God is present in all believers without multiplication. We must distinguish, moreover, between a body merely human and left to itself, and the body peculiar to the λογος and personally united with Him. The philosophical axiom, ‘A natural body cannot be at one and the same time in many places,’ is true of a merely human body, but not of the body united with the Logos.”

Further objections are the following “(1) That the doctrine of the omnipresence of Christ according to His human nature is opposed to the doctrine of the real, peculiar, divine presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Holy Supper.” To this HOLL. (1125) replies: “We distinguish between the general and special omnipresent, and nevertheless is presented to a particular person by a special kind of presence. For thus we read that the omnipresent Holy Spirit descended on Christ in the form of a dove, Matt. 3:16; was bestowed upon the disciples by an external breathing, John 20:22; was communicated to the apostles under the form of fiery tongues, Acts 2:3; and dwells truly and by His gracious presence in the bodies of the godly, 1 Cor. 3:6. Although, therefore, a general omnipresence is communicated to the assumed flesh of Christ by reason of the personal union, yet that does not prevent or destroy a special and sacramental presence of the body of Christ. (2) ‘The substantial presence of the body of Christ in, with and under the bread is contrary to the first institution and administration of the Supper: for when Christ took the bread from the table, broke, and distributed it, He was reclining, together with His disciples, at the table. He was not in, with and under the bread, nor did He carry Himself in His hands.’ We reply: It is not contrary to the first institution and administration of the Supper. When Christ took bread from the table, brake, and distributed it, He was of course reclining at the table with His disciples; and, when He distributed the bread, He at the same time caused His body to be sacramentally in, with, and under the bread, not by removing from the table, but by the presence of His body multiplied by the divine omnipotence.” (3) A third objection was based upon the ascension of Christ to heaven. For an answer, comp. § 38, Note 26, and GRH., X, 147: “Christ thus ascended to heaven that He might ascend also above all heavens, and sit down at the Right Hand of God, i.e., according to the statement of the AUG. CONF., III, ‘That He might powerfully reign and have dominion over all creatures.’ This explanation is drawn from the Scripture itself, Ps. 8:6; Matt. 28:18; Eph. 1:20; 4:10; 1 Cor. 15:25. By the power which is given to Christ, exalted as to His human nature to the Right Hand of the Father, He is able to subject all things to Himself, Phil. 3:21; by this same power, therefore, He is able to give His body to be eaten by us in the Supper. Where, notice that the ascension of Christ to heaven is described in the Holy Scriptures not only abstractly and separately, as if it were only a movement of ascent, by which the body of Christ by a local removal (μεταστασις) had been carried away from the earth, and by degrees lifted up on high to heaven; . . . but also concretely and conjointly, so that the ascent at the same time embraced the exaltation of Christ to the Right Hand of God. Wherefore, since, after the ascent according to the flesh, Christ was elevated to the omnipotent and omnipresent Right Hand of God; therefore, from the ascent, which is inseparable from the sitting at the Right Hand of God, we are by no means to infer any infirmity of any king or absence of the flesh of Christ, but rather His infinite majesty and the effects of His divine power.”