In regards to my previous post, here is some Luther on a similar theme. Reading it got me thinking about what I wrote in the last post.
Thus when God proposes the doctrines of faith, he always proposes things that are simply impossible and absurd — if, that is, you want to follow the judgment of reason.
It does indeed seem ridiculous and absurd to reason that in the Lord's Supper the body and the blood of Christ are presented, that Baptism is "the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit" (Titus 3:5), that Christ the Son of God was conceived and carried in the, womb of the Virgin, that he was born, that he suffered the most ignominious of deaths on the cross, that He was raised again, that he is now sitting at the right hand of the Father, and that He now bas "authority in. heaven and on earth" (Matt. 28:18). Paul calls the Gospel of Christ the crucified "the Word of the cross" (I Cor. 1:18) and "the folly of preaching" (1 Cor. 1:21), which the Jews regarded as offensive and the Greeks as a foolish doctrine.
Reason judges this way about all the doctrines of the faith; for it does not understand that the supreme form of worship is to bear the voice of God and to believe, but it supposes that what it chooses on its own and what it does with a so-called good intention and from its own devotion is pleasing to God. When God speaks, reason, therefore, regards His Word as heresy and as the word of the devil; for it seems so absurd. Such is the theology of all the sophists and of the sectarians who measure the Word of God by reason.
But faith slaughters reason and kills the beast that the whole world and all the creatures cannot kill. Thus Abraham killed it by faith in the Word of God, in which offspring was promised to him from Sarah, who was barren and past childbearing. Reason did not immediately assent to this Word in Abraham. Surely it fought against faith in him and regarded it as something ridiculous, absurd, and impossible that Sarah, who was not only ninety years old now but was also barren by nature, should give birth to a son. Faith certainly had this struggle with reason in Abraham. But faith won the victory in him; it killed and sacrificed God's bitterest and most harmful enemy.
Thus all devout people enter with Abraham into the darkness of faith, kill reason, and say: "Reason, you are foolish. You do not understand the things that belong to God (Matt. 16:23). Therefore do not speak against me, but keep quiet. Do not judge; but listen to the Word of God, and believe it." Thus devout people, by their faith, kill a beast that is greater than the world; and so they offer a highly pleasing sacrifice and worship to God.
Martin Luther, AE, vol. 26, Lectures on Galatians , 1535, p. 227-228.
4 comments:
Do Lutherans believe that the bread and wine during Holy Communion are the actual body and blood of Christ, or do they believe that the visible, tangible, bread and wine accompany the invisible, intangible body and blood of our Lord during Communion? In other words, are there two ingredients or four ingredients during the distribution and consumption of the elements? Thanks!
Well, Lutherans believe that the bread and wine IS the actual body and blood of Jesus according to his words. The Supper is not a representation or a memorial. One actually eats the very body and blood of the real incarnate Jesus.
But the bread and wine remain, again according to the word of the Lord. Nowhere does the Scripture indicate that the bread and wine cease to exist.
So if you are counting when you receive you get four bread wine body and blood.
Rev. Almes, thanks for a lucid explanation. More often than not, I have encountered Lutherans who teach otherwise, as if the bread and wine were alongside Christ's body and blood.
Not to split hairs or engage in logomachy, but if the bread and wine are the Body and Blood, would it not be more accurate then to say there are but two ingredients in the sacrament? That is, 1. bread that is Body; and 2. wine that is Blood?
Gregory of Nyssa in his Great Catechism explained that ordinary bread becomes body (our bodies) when we consume it, so that our bodies are in a sense bread. In the sacrament, the consecrated bread becomes Christ's Body, however, the change takes place prior to our consumption. Is the Lutheran understanding similar or identical?
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