7. What makes the Lord's Supper the Lord's Supper.
(Forma coenae sacrae)
We have already seen that the Lord's Supper is not meant as a one-time or temporary event, but that Christ wants it celebrated in the Church until the Last Day. Thus, the question now arises as to how the Lord's Supper
1345) Corp. ref. IX, 277.<w:t>1346) M. 543, 41. 42. [Trigl. 817, Epit., VII, 41-42 🔗]
426 > The Lord's Supper. [English ed. ~ 365-366]
is realized in each individual case. It is to be said: The Lord's Supper instituted by Christ is effected, not by the nature of the administrator, nor by the faith of the recipients, but by the institution of Christ, which is effectively effected wherever the Lord's Supper is celebrated according to the institution of Christ until the Last Day. To illustrate this, the Formula of Concord appropriates a saying of Chrysostom, in which it says, among other things, "As this address: 'Grow and multiply and fill the earth' is spoken only once, but is always powerful in nature, so that it grows and multiplies, so also this address is spoken once ('This is my body, this is my blood'), but to this day and to its future it is powerful and works that in the Lord's Supper of the Church his true body and blood are present."1347) ¶ But even on this point the Reformed polemic was untrue from the very beginning. It sought to bring into the field against the Lutheran doctrine of the Lord's Supper the odium which rightly exists against the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation and the power of transubstantiation attached to the anointing of the priest. It likes to present the matter as if, according to Lutheran doctrines, human words and human authority also bring about the Real Presence.1348) In contrast, Luther repeatedly states: It is not human speech that brings about the body and blood of Christ, but Christ's Word of promise and command alone. Christ's Word "This is my body" brought about the first supper, that is, made the communion bread the bearer of Christ's body. And because Christ commanded us to do what He did until the end of days, our Lord's Supper is also what the first Supper was. Christ's "word of command” ["Heißelwort"] now also makes our word an "effective word” ["Tätelwort"]. Luther writes against Zwingli: "If I were to say about all the loaves: 'This is Christ's body,' of course nothing would follow from it. But if we say in the Lord's Supper, according to its institution and its meaning: 'This is my body,' then it is His body, not because of our speaking or doing, but because of His hotness, that He has thus commanded us to speak and to do, and has bound his commanding and doing to our speaking." 1349) The Formula of Concord also takes this point in detail:1350) "The true presence of the body and blood
1347) M. 664, 76 [Trigl. 999, Sol. Decl., VII, 76 🔗].
1348) So already Carlstadt in his "Gesprächbüchlein", St. L. XX, 2356.
1349) St. L. XX, 918.<w:t xml:space="preserve">1350) M. 663, 74 f. <w:t>[Trigl. 999, Sol. Decl., VII, 76 🔗]
427 > The Lord's Supper. [English ed. ~ 366]
Christ in the Lord's Supper does not (non efficit) create any man's word or work, be it the merit or speaking of the minister or the eating and drinking or faith of the communicants, but all these things are to be ascribed to themselves alone to the almighty power of God and to the word, institution and order of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the true and almighty words of Jesus Christ, which he spake in the first institution, were not alone powerful in the first Supper, but endure, are valid, work, and are yet (adhuc hodie) powerful, that in all places where the Supper is kept after Christ's institution, and his words are used, by virtue and power of the same words which Christ spake in the first supper, the body and blood of Jesus Christ are truly present, distributed, and received."
Therefore, for the celebration of the Lord's Supper each time, the congregation must clearly declare that it wants to celebrate the Lord's Supper instituted by Christ or, which is the same, to repeat the action ordered by Christ. The congregation declares this explanation by using the elements ordered by Christ, i.e. bread and wine, for use in the Lord's Supper. Consecration is correctly described as the act by which bread and wine are set apart from ordinary use and designated for use in the Lord's Supper, that is, designated so that with the bread, according to Christ's promise, the body of Christ is received, and with the wine, according to Christ's promise, the blood of Christ is received. That consecration was also in use in the apostolic congregations we see from 1 Cor. 10:16: "The cup of blessing which we bless (τό ποτήριον τής ευλογίας ο εύλογονμεν), is it not the fellowship of the blood of Christ?" Here Calvin goes astray. In rightly dismissing the Roman consecration as a "magic enchantment" (incantatio) whereby the bread is changed into the body of Christ, he at the same time falls into the opposite ditch. He adds that the consecration in the Lord's Supper has to do only with persons, not with the elements of the Lord's Supper. With this he puts himself in obvious contradiction to the Scriptures. According to the apostle's words 1 Cor. 10:16, the object of εύλογοΰμενis the ό, and ό refers not to persons but to the cup of blessing, τό ποτήριον τής ευλογίας,
428 > The Lord's Supper. [English ed. ~ 367]
ο εύλογον μεν.1351) Against this Hodge says:1352) "When it is said that our Lord gave thanks or blessed the cup and the bread, it is to be understood that He not only thanked God for His mercies, but that He also invoked His blessing, or, in other words, prayed that the bread and wine might be what He intended them to be, the symbols of His body and blood, and the means of spiritual nourishment to His disciples. This is also taught by the Apostle in 1 Cor. 10:16, where he speaks of 'the cup of blessing,' i. e., the cup which has been blessed, or consecrated by prayer to a sacred use; as is explained by the following words, 'which we bless.'" Everything is correct here except that Hodge takes the liberty of slipping "the symbols of the body and blood of Christ" into the text. According to the text, the bread and wine are blessed, not that they might be "symbols," but that they might be the "fellowship" of the body and blood of Christ. Meyer also admits, despite his hostility to the Scriptural doctrine of the Lord's Supper, that 1 Cor. 10:16 is "a praising consecration of prayer" (not of persons, but) "of bread and wine for holy use".1353) In this respect it is different with the Lord's Supper than with Baptism. In the case of Baptism, there is no mention of the consecration of water, neither in its institution by Christ nor in its administration in the apostolic church. But the consecration of the elements in
1351) Inst. IV, 17, 39. How Calvin confuses right and wrong is evident from the following words: Nihil ergo magis praeposterum fieri in coena potest, quam si vertatur in mutam actionem, quod sub papae tyrannide factum est. Totam siquidem vim consecrationis a sacerdotis intentione pendere voluerunt, quasi hoc nihil ad populum pertineret, cui mysterium maxime explicari oportuerat. Inde autem natus est hic error, quod non observabant promissiones illas, quibus conficitur consecratio, non ad elementa ipsa, sed ad eos, qui recipiunt, destinari. Atqui non panem alloquitur Christus, ut corpus suum fiat; sed discipulos iubet manducare atque illis corporis et sanguinis sui communicationem. pollicetur. Nec alium ordinem docet Paulus, quam ut una cum pane et calice promissiones fidelibus offerantur. Ita est sane. Non hic magicam aliquam incantationem imaginari nos decet, ut satis sit verba demurmurasse, quasi ab elementis exaudiantur; sed verba illa vivam praedicationem esse intelligamus, quae auditores aedificet, quae intus penetret in eorum animos, quae cordibus imprimatur ac insideat, quae efficaciam in complemento eius, quod promittit, exserat. … Si referuntur promissiones et mysterium enarratur, ut cum fructu recipiant, qui recepturi sunt, non est, quod dubitemus, hanc esse veram consecrationem. [Google]
1352) Syst. Theol., III, 618.<w:t>1353) To Matt. 26:26.
429 > The Lord's Supper. [ [English ed. ~ 367-368]
the Lord's Supper is reported to us by Scripture both in the institution of the Lord's Supper and in the administration of it in the apostolic Church. 1354)
It has been discussed with which words the consecration should be done. With regard to this point, Luther, on the one hand, opposes the papists, who declared it a great sin if one or the other word was accidentally omitted during the recitation of the words of institution. Luther, on the other hand, points to the fact "that the Holy Spirit has diligently ordered that no evangelist be in complete agreement with the other."1355) On the other hand, Luther insists that "the order of Christ,
1354) Well Gerhard (L. de coena s., § 151) describes the consecration to the Roman and Calvinist error in the following words (translated in Walther's Pastorale, p. 171 f.): Haec eucharistiae consecratio 1) non est magica quaedam incantatio vi verborum certorum essentialiter transmutans panem in corpus et vinum in sanguinem Christi, sicut sacrificuli pontificii fingunt, quod propter rasuram et unctionem vi canonis et intentionis in fide ecclesiae ex opere operato conficiant sacramentum, et externa symbola in corpus et sanguinem Christi essentialiter convertant. 2) Nec est historica tantum institutionis repetitio, sicut Calviniani recitationem verborum institutionis parvi faciunt (Bucerus in cap. XXVI. Matt.) eandemque ad populum saltem dirigendam, nequaquam vero ad externorum symbolorum sanctificationem spectare adserunt (Calvinus, lib. IV. Instit., cap. 17, § 39), sed est 3) efficax αγιασμός, quo iuxta mandatum, ordinationem et institutionem Christi ex prima coena sanctificatio in nostram coenam quasi derivatur, et externa elementa ad usum hunc sacrum destinantur, ut cum his corpus et sanguis Christi distribuantur [Google]. Non quidem tribuimus recitationi verborum institutionis hanc vim, ut corpus et sanguinem Christi occulta aliqua virtute verbis inhaerente praesentia faciat (sicut magi sua carmina de Iove Elicio, aut de luna coelo deducenda certis verbis recitant), multo minus, ut externa elementa essentialiter transmutet; sed sincere credimus ac profitemur, quod praesentia corporis et sanguinis Christi a sola voluntate et promissione Christi et a perpetuo durante primae institutionis efficacia in solidum' dependeat; interim tamen addimus, primaevae illius institutionis repetitionem, a ministro ecclesiae in celebratione eucharistiae factam, non solum historicam ac doctrinalem, sed etiam consecratoriam esse, qua iuxta ordinationem Christi externa symbola vere et efficaciter ad usum sacrum destinantur, ut in ipsa distributione sint corporis et sanguinis Christi κοινωνία, sicut apostolus diserte loquitur, 1 Cor. 10:16: Panis, quem frangimus, est communicatio corporis Christi; poculum benedictionis, cui benedicimus, est communicatio sanguinis Christi. Ipse Dei Filius verba institutionis- semel prolata per os ministri repetit, et per ea panem et vinum sanctificat, consecrat et benedicit, ut sint corporis et sanguinis distribuendi media. [Google]
1355) Walch XIX, 1348 [St. L. XIX, 1104].
430 > The Lord's Supper. [English ed. ~ 368-369]
instituted in the Lord's Supper, be sung or spoken publicly and distinctly" so that in this way those celebrating the Lord's Supper may confess and become certain that they are celebrating the Lord's Supper instituted by Christ.1356) Likewise, the Formula of Concord, also citing 1 Cor. 10:16, says that "the words of institution in the act of Holy Communion are to be spoken or sung publicly before the assembly clearly and distinctly, and by no means refrained from, in order that obedience may be rendered to Christ's command 'This do' … and the elements of bread and wine in this holy custom, that Christ's body and blood may therewith be given us to eat and drink, may be sanctified or blessed, as Paul saith: 'The blessed cup which we bless'; which is not done otherwise than by the repetition and recital of the words of institution."1357)
In connection with the consecration, questions have been raised that come close to the field of curiosae quaestiones.
1356) Walther rightly calls it (Past, p. 173 f.) "an exceedingly lovely picture", as Luther XIX, 1279 sketches it of a truly Evangelical communion: "There steps before the altar our pastor ...who publicly and clearly sings the order of Christ, instituted in the Lord's Supper, … and we, especially those who want to take the sacrament, kneel beside, behind, and around him ..., all of us right holy fellow priests, sanctified by Christ's blood and anointed and consecrated by the Holy Spirit in baptism. … We do not let our parish priest speak the order of Christ for himself as for his person, but he is the mouth of us all, and we all speak it with him from the heart..... If he stumbles in the words or goes astray and forgets whether he has spoken the words, we are there, listening, holding fast and are certain that they have been spoken: therefore we cannot be deceived."
1357) 665, 79 ff. [Trigl 1001, Sol. Decl, VII, 79 ff. 🔗] After Luther had said with regard to baptism: "If you wanted to baptize a child with water and say an Our Father or something else from Scripture and the Word of God over it, that would not be called a true baptism," he continues: "Just as in the sacrament of the altar of the body and blood of Christ, where the command and institution are not kept, it is not a sacrament. As if one were to read over the bread and wine on the altar the ten commandments, the Creed, or any other passage and psalms, or again, if one were to take instead of bread and wine something otherl, gold, silver, flesh, oil, water, even if he had the right words of Christ's institution, this would certainly not be Christ's body and blood, and although God's Word is there and God's creature, yet it is not a sacrament. For his order and command is not there, wherein he hath called bread and wine, and the words: ‘Take, eat, this is my body; drink, this is my blood’. Summa, thou shalt neither choose nor ordain him word or creature thyself, and shalt neither do nor leave anything everywhere of thine own accord, but his command and order shall set thee both word and creature, which thou shalt keep entire and unchanged." (X, 2068.)
431 > The Lord's Supper. [English ed. ~ 369-370.]
If, for example, it is asked whether it would not also be the Lord's Supper if Christians gathered to celebrate it, thinking in their hearts that they wanted to celebrate the Lord's Supper instituted by Christ, the answer is obvious that sensible people would not even think of "consecrating" the elements in this mute way. Even the Reformed protested against omitting the words of the Lord's Supper from the celebration.1358) And if Meyer tried to put his "praising prayer consecration of bread and wine to Holy Communion" into concrete reality, experience taught him that the "praising prayer consecration" indeed cannot come about without coming to the words with which Christ instituted and gave Holy Communion to His Church.
If it stands firm that not the nature of the administrator or the communicants, but the institution and order of Christ makes the Lord's Supper, then it is at the same time stated that not only the worthy, but also the unworthy guests receive Christ's body and blood, if they participate in a Lord's Supper at which the order of Christ is kept. Moreover, the manducatio indignorum is still expressly taught when the apostle says of the unworthy that they become guilty of the Lord's body and blood.1359) Luther therefore does not exaggerate when he counts "all in one cake" who "do not want to believe that the Lord's bread in the Lord's Supper is his right natural body, which the ungodly or Judas receives just as well as St. Peter and all the saints".1360) All who deny the manducatio indignorum deny eo ipso that Christ's body and blood are in the Lord's Supper by Christ's institution. The Reformed therefore teach that even for the worthy Christ's body and blood are not in the Lord's Supper but in heaven. Thus, however, the manducatio indignorum becomes a test question, and Luther rightly insisted that the Wittenberg Concordia of 1536 clarify this point.1361)
1358) Admon. Neost., p. 101; in Frank III, 131.
1359) 1 Cor. 11:27.<w:t xml:space="preserve">1360) Formula of Concord 653, 33. [F. C., Trigl. 983, Sol. Decl., VII, 33 🔗]
1361) Formula of Concord 649, 16 [Trigl. 977, Sol. Decl., VII, 16 🔗]: Secondly, they hold that the institution of this sacrament, done through Christ, is powerful in Christendom, and that it does not depend on the worthiness or unworthiness of the minister who administers the sacrament or of the one who receives it. Therefore, as St. Paul says, that even the
432 > The Lord's Supper. [English ed. ~ 370-371]
From the fact that only the institution of Christ makes the Lord's Supper, it further follows that the Roman and Reformed do not have the Lord's Supper instituted by Christ, insofar as they perform an act which is outside the institution of Christ. Regarding the Roman Mass, the Formula of Concord declares:1362) "If the bread is not distributed in the Papist Mass, but is presented offered up or enclosed, transferred, and adored, it is not to be considered a sacrament." Concerning the Roman Private Mass in particular, Luther says:1363) "In the Private Mass there is not only the abuse or sin that the priest acts and receives unworthily, but even though the priest is holy and worthy, tamen ipsa substantia institutionis Christi sublata est, they take away the essential order and institution of Christ and make their own order.... Therefore no one can nor should believe that there is Christ's body and blood, because His order is not there." — In the judgment on the Reformed Lord's Supper, the Lutheran theologians do not entirely agree. Fecht, Dannhauer and others judge,1364) that the Reformed have the Lord's Supper instituted by Christ, thus also distributing and receiving Christ's body and blood. They base their judgment on the fact that the Reformed fellowships hold to the words of the Lord's Supper, even though they give the words a different meaning. Most of the old Lutheran teachers hold that the Reformed Lord's Supper is an act outside the order of Christ and therefore not a Lord's Supper. We will have to agree with this judgment. Since the Reformed publicly declare that they do not intend to celebrate the Lord's Supper with the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ, but declare such a Supper to be an abomination, they also do not celebrate the Lord's Supper given by Christ to His Church. The Reformed doctrine of the Lord's Supper is an actual renunciation of Christ's words of the Lord's Supper. Thus they have no Word of God for their Lord's Supper; because Christ did not institute a Lord's Supper in which
the unworthy partake of the sacrament, so they hold that even the unworthy may truly receive the body and blood of Christ, and that the unworthy may truly receive the same, if they keep the Lord's institution and command. But such receive it to judgment, as St. Paul says; for they abuse the holy sacrament, because they receive it without true repentance and faith."
1362) M. 665, 87. [Trigl. 1003, ibid., 87 🔗] 1363) St. L. XIX, 1265.
1364) Cf. Lehre und Wehre 1875, p. 119 ff.
433 > The Lord's Supper. [English ed. ~ 371-372]
bread and wine are distributed and received as a symbol of the absent body and blood of Christ. It is necessary to recall the analogue of Unitarian baptism. As little as Unitarians administer Christian baptism because they publicly renounce the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as the one true God, even though they still retain the words, so little do the Reformed administer Christian communion because they publicly renounce the meaning of Christ's communion words, even though they use the words according to outward sound. Luther writes — and these words have also been included in the Formula of Concord1365) — "I confess the sacrament of the altar, that there truly the body and blood in bread and wine are eaten and drunk orally, although the priests who administer it or those who receive it do not believe or otherwise misuse it. For it does not stand on man's faith or unbelief, but on God's Word of God and order. Unless they first interpret God's Word and order differently,1366) as the present enemies of the sacraments do, who, to be sure, have the same bread and wine; for they have not the words and established order of God, but have perverted and changed them according to their own conceit." The objection that we would then also have to deny Reformed baptism,1367) is not applicable, because the Reformed do indeed renounce the meaning of the words of the Lord's Supper, but not the meaning of the words of baptism. The Reformed error on baptism goes only to the fruit, not to the essence of baptism.1368)
1365) 653, 32 [Trigl. 983, Sol. Decl., VII, 32 🔗].
1366) Frank (III, 66) correctly remarks on the "to interpret differently" that it does not "denote another case in an independent way", but is added epexegetically to "to change God's Word of God and order".
1367) Thus Fecht and Dannhauer. The evidence L. u. W. 1875, p. 180. Cf. also Frank III, 145 f.
1368) Walther, Pastorale, p. 181: "It is true that the administration of Holy Communion is not rendered invalid and ineffective either by unworthiness or by unbelief or by the wrong intention of the person administering it; But those false teachers who, with the consent of their congregations, publicly pervert the words of institution, and impute to them a meaning according to which the body and blood of the Lord are not really present, distributed, and taken in the holy supper, who thus retain the sound of the words, but take out of them that which makes them the Word of God, namely, the divine meaning, and thus, as, for example, as, e. g., the Zwinglians and Calvinists, deny and abolish the essence of the Holy Supper (as the Antltrinitarians
434 > The Lord's Supper. [English ed. ~ 372-373]
It should be added that the Formula of Concord quite definitely rejects the opinion that the Lord's Supper is already realized by the consecration. Johann Saliger, pastor in Lübeck and Rostock, had stubbornly defended the view that already ante usum, i.e. before the distribution and reception, the unio sacramentalis takes place.1369) On the other hand, the Formula of Concord says:1370) "This blessing or recital of the words of Christ's institution, as ordered by Christ, is held (as if the blessed bread were not distributed, received, and enjoyed, but enclosed, offered, or transferred), does not alone make a sacrament, but it must be the command of Christ: That do, which sums up the whole action or performance of this sacrament, that in a Christian meeting one takes bread and wine, blesses, distributes, receives, eats, drinks, and thereby proclaims the Lord's death, must be kept undivided and unchanging, as also St. Paul sets before us the whole action of breaking bread or distributing and receiving 1 Cor. 10." Against Bellarmin's assertion that Christ spoke the words, "This is my body," even before the act of eating, and therefore that even before the reception the sacrament was complete (confectum) by the consecration, Quenstedt aptly says: "Christ does not speak absolutely of the consecrated bread, that it is his body, but of the bread broken and given for eating. For first he said: 'Take and eat,' after which he said: 'This is my body.'" 1371)
deny the essence of Baptism) — such do not administer the Lord’s Supper, but distribute merely bread and wine, even though they retain and recite the words of institution."
1369) About Saliger see Walther, Pastorale, p. 175, note. Not only did a commission negotiate unsuccessfully with Saliger, but he also brought the matter to the pulpit. A more detailed account of the dealings with Saliger is given in Frank III, 146 ff.
1370) M. 665, 82 [Trigl. 1001, 83 f. 🔗].
1371) II, 1268. Walther quotes (Pastorale, p. 175) from Aegidius Hunnius, Art. s. Loc. de sacramentis, 1390, p. 712 sq.: "As the bread is the fellowship of the Body of Christ only in the act of eating and not earlier, so also the bread is not sacramentally united with the Body until that fellowship and that taking take place. For if, after the recitation of the words of institution by the minister, and after the success of the so-called consecration, a conflagration or other tumult should arise before anyone had come to the table of the Lord, and thus by this accident the sacred
435 > The Lord's Supper. [English ed. ~ 373-374]