Chapter XX (continued, part 7)
There is, therefore, a presence of Christ's body in the Lord's Supper; not local, but spiritual; not to the senses, but to the mind and to faith; and not of nearness, but of efficacy. If the presence is in the promise, then the body of Christ is present, offered to and received by the believer whenever and wherever he embraces and appropriates the promise. So far the doctrine of the Reformed Church is clear.
Manducation
Our Lord in John 6:53–58, expressly and solemnly declares that except a man eat of his flesh, and drink his blood, he has no life in him; and that whoso eateth his flesh and drinketh his blood, hath eternal life. It is here taught that the eating spoken of is necessary to salvation. He who does not eat of the flesh of the Son of Man, has no life in him. He who does thus eat, shall live forever. Now as no Christian Church, not even the Roman, maintains that a participation of the Lord's Supper is essential to salvation, it is plain that no such Church can consistently believe that the eating spoken of is that which is peculiar to that ordinance. Again, the Scriptures so clearly and variously teach that those who believe in Christ; who receive the record God has given of his Son; who receive Him; who flee to Him for refuge; who lay hold of Him as their God and Saviour, shall never perish but have eternal life; it is plain that what is expressed in John 6 by eating the flesh of Christ and drinking his blood, must be the same thing that is elsewhere expressed in the various ways just referred to. When we eat our food we receive and appropriate it to the nourishment of our bodies; so to eat the flesh of Christ, is to receive and appropriate Him and his sacrificial work for the life of our souls. Without this appropriation of Christ to ourselves we have no life; with it, we have life eternal, for He is our life. As this appropriation is an act of faith, it is by believing that we eat his flesh and drink his blood. We accordingly find that this is recognized in all the leading Confessions of the Reformed Church. Thus in the Zurich Confession it is said, "Eating is believing, and believing is eating." The Helvetic Confession, as quoted above, says, that this eating takes place as often as and wherever a man believes in Christ. The Belgic Confession says,2 "God sent Christ as the true bread from heaven which nourishes and sustains the spiritual life of believers, if it be eaten, that is, if it be applied and received by the Spirit through faith." Faith, as shown above, is, in all these Confessions, declared to be the hand and the mouth by which this reception and appropriation are effected. A distinction may be, and often is, made
between spiritual and sacramental manducation. But the difference between them is merely circumstantial. In the former the believer feeds on Christ to his spiritual nourishment, without the intervention and use of the elements of bread and wine; in the latter, he does the same thing in the use of those elements as the divinely appointed sign and seal of the truth and promise of God.
Although the Confessions are thus uniform and clear in their assertion, "that eating is believing," the theologians, in some instances, make a distinction between them. Thus Calvin says: "There are some who define in a word, that to eat the flesh of the Christ, and to drink his blood, is no other than to believe on Christ Himself. But I conceive that in that remarkable discourse, in which He recommends us to feed upon his body, He intended to teach us something more striking and sublime; namely, that we are quickened by a real participation of Him, which he designates by the terms eating and drinking, that no person might suppose the life which we receive from Him to consist in simple knowledge.… At the same time, we confess there is no eating but by faith, and it is impossible to imagine any other; but the difference between me and those whose opinion I now oppose is this, … they consider eating to be faith itself, but I apprehend it to be rather a consequence of faith." Among the moderns Dean Alford makes much the same distinction. "What is this eating and drinking? Clearly, not merely faith: for faith answers to the hand reached forth for the food,—but not the act of eating. Faith is a necessary condition of the act: so that we can hardly say, with Augustine, 'Crede, et manducasti;' but 'crede et manucabis.' "2 Eating, he says, implies the act of appropriation. This is a distinction without a difference. It concerns simply the extent given to the meaning of the word faith. If faith be merely knowledge and assent, then there is a difference between believing and eating, or appropriating. But if by faith we not merely receive as with the hand, but appropriate and apply what is thus received, the difference between believing and eating disappears. When we are commanded to eat the flesh and to drink the blood of Christ, we are commanded to act; and the act required is an act of faith; the act of receiving and
appropriating Christ and the benefits of his redemption. The language of Calvin above quoted is to be taken in connection with his explicit declaration already cited, that the Christian receives and feeds on Christ whenever he truly believes; and with the fact that he admits that the believer eats Christ as fully elsewhere as in the Lord's Supper; and especially with the fact that the saints under the old dispensation ate of the same spiritual meat and drank of the same spiritual drink as fully and as really as believers now do. The Reformed understood that "eating and drinking," as used in John 6:51–58, must be understood "figuratively of the spiritual appropriation of Christ by faith," because our Lord makes such eating and drinking essential to salvation. On this point the Lutherans are of one mind with the Reformed, in so far as their leading theologians understand all that is said in John 6 of eating his flesh and drinking his blood, of the appropriation of his sacrificial death by the act of believing.
What is received in the Lord's Supper
The question, What is the act we perform in eating? and, What it is we eat? are distinct, though the answer to one may determine the answer to the other. If the manducation is not with the mouth but by faith, then the thing eaten must be spiritual and not material. Nevertheless our Lord says we must eat his flesh and drink his blood; and all the Reformed Confessions teach that we receive the body and blood of Christ, although not "after a corporal or carnal manner." In answer to the question, What is here meant by the body and blood of Christ? the almost uniform answer is, (1.) That it is not the matter of his body and blood. (2.) That it is not his body and blood as such. (3.) That it is not his glorified body now in heaven. His body and blood were received by the disciples before his death, and consequently before his ascension and glorification, and it is not disputed that believers since the apostolic age receive what the Apostles received when this sacrament was instituted. (4.) That we receive Christ's body as broken, or as given unto death for us, and his blood as shed for the remission of sins. (5.) That therefore to receive the body and
blood as offered in the sacrament, or in the Word, is to receive and appropriate the sacrificial virtue or effects of the death of Christ on the cross. And, (6.) That as Christ and his benefits are inseparable, they who receive the one receive also the other; as by faith through the indwelling of the Holy Ghost we are united to Christ so as to be members of that body of which He is the head and the perpetual source of life. By faith, therefore, we become one with Him, so as to be flesh of his flesh, in a sense analogous to that in which husband and wife are no more two, but one flesh.
Although Calvin admitted all these propositions, he nevertheless, at times, teaches that what the believers receive is specifically an influence from the glorified body of Christ in heaven. Thus he says: "We admit without circumlocution that the flesh of Christ is lifegiving, not only because in it once our salvation was obtained, but because now, we being united to Him in sacred union, it breathes life into us. Or, to use fewer words, because, being by the secret power of the Spirit engrafted into the body of Christ, we have a common life with Him; for from the hidden fountain of divinity, life is, in a wonderful manner, infused into the flesh of Christ, and thence flows out to us." Again, "Christ is absent from us as to the body; by his Spirit, however, dwelling in us, He so lifts us to Himself in heaven, that he transfuses the life-giving vigour of his life into us, as we grow by the vital heat of the sun."2 If by the word "flesh," in this connection, we understand the humanity of Christ, there is a sense in which the passages above quoted may be understood in accordance with the common doctrine not only of the Reformed, but of all Christian churches. When Paul said "I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me," he no doubt meant by Christ the incarnate Son of God clothed in our nature at the right hand of God. It is a divine-human Saviour, He who is both God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever, in whom and by whom we live, and who dwells in us by his Spirit. Unless we are willing to accuse the illustrious Calvin of inconsistency, his meaning must be made to harmonize with what he says elsewhere. In the "Consensus Tigurinus," he says: "Christus quatenus homo est, non alibi quam in cœlo, nec aliter quam mente et
fidei intelligentia quærendus est;" and again, "Quod autem carnis suæ esu et sanguinis potione, quæ hic figurantur, Christus animas nostras per fidem Spiritus sancti virtute pascit, id non perinde accipiendum, quasi fiat aliqua substantiæ vel commixtio vel transfusio: sed quoniam ex carne semel in sacrificium oblata et sanguine in expiationem effuso vitam hauriamus." It is here expressly said that what the believer receives in the Lord's Supper is not any supernatural influence flowing from the glorified body of Christ in heaven; but the benefits of his death as an expiation for sin. It is to be remarked that Calvin uses the very words of the twentythird article of the Consensus in explanation of what he meant by saying, "ex abscondito Deitatis fonte in Christi carnem mirabiliter infusa est vita, ut inde ad nos flueret."2 To preserve the consistency of the great Reformer his language must be interpreted so as to harmonize with the two crucial facts for which he so earnestly contends; first, that believers receive elsewhere by faith all they receive at the Lord's table; and secondly, that we Christians receive nothing above or beyond that which was received by the saints under the Old Testament, before the glorified body of Christ had any existence. It is also to be remembered that Calvin avowed his agreement with Zwingle and Oecolampadius on all questions relating to the sacraments.
The Efficacy of the Lord's Supper as a Sacrament
This includes two points, first, The effect produced; and second, The agency or influence to which the effect is due. In the Lord's Supper we are said to receive Christ and the benefits of his redemption to our spiritual nourishment and growth in grace. As our natural food imparts life and strength to our bodies, so this sacrament is one of the divinely appointed means to strengthen the principle of life in the soul of the believer, and to confirm his faith in the promises of the gospel. The Apostle teaches that by partaking of the bread and wine, the symbols of Christ's body and blood given for us, we are thereby united to him as our head, and with all our fellow believers as joint members of his mystical body. The union between the head and
members of the human body and between the vine and its branches, is a continuous union. There is a constant flow of vital influence from the one to the other. In like manner the union between Christ and his people is continuous. He constantly imparts his life-giving influence to all united to Him by faith and by the indwelling of his Spirit. It has often been stated already that the Bible teaches, (1.) That Christ and his people are one; that this union is not merely a union of congeniality or feeling, but such as constitutes them one in a real but mysterious sense. (2.) That the bond of union is faith and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, who dwelling in Him without measure is communicated from Him to all his members. As God is everywhere present and everywhere operative by his Spirit, so Christ dwells in our hearts by faith through or in virtue of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. (3.) He is thus our life. He works in us to will and to do according to his own good pleasure. As God works everywhere throughout nature continually controlling all natural causes each after its kind, to produce the effects intended; so does Christ work in us according to the laws of our nature in the production of everything that is good; so that it is from Him that "all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works do proceed." It is not, therefore, we that live, but Christ that liveth in us.
As our Lord in addressing the Apostles and through them all his disciples, said this is my body and blood given for you, He says the same in the most impressive manner in this ordinance to every believing communicant: "This is my body broken for you." "This is my blood shed for you." These words when received by faith fill the heart with joy, confidence, gratitude, love, and devotion; so that such a believer rises from the Lord's table refreshed by the infusion of a new life.
The efficacy of this sacrament, according to the Reformed doctrine, is not to be referred to any virtue in the ordinance itself, whether in its elements or actions; much less to any virtue in the administrator; nor to the mere power of the truths which it signifies; nor to the inherent, divine power in the word or promise by which it is attended; nor to
the real presence of the material body and blood of Christ (i.e., of the body born of the Virgin), whether by the way of transubstantiation, consubstantiation, or impanation; nor to a supernatural life-giving influence emanating from the glorified body of Christ in heaven, nor to the communication of the theanthropic nature of Christ, but only to "the blessing of Christ, and the working of his Spirit in them that receive" the sacrament of his body and blood.
By some of the early fathers the resurrection of the body was regarded as a specific effect of the Lord's Supper, which was therefore called, as by Ignatius, φάρμακον αθανασίας, ἀντίδοτος τοῦ ἀποθανεῖν. This idea was connected in their minds with the doctrine of impanation referred to in the foregoing foot-note. Of this there is little trace in the theology of either the Reformed or Lutheran Church. In the Scotch Confession of 1560, it is indeed said: "As the eternal deity gives life and immortality to the flesh of Christ, so also his flesh and blood, when eaten and drunk by us, confer on us the same prerogatives;" and in the confession adopted by the Lutherans in 1592 it is said, the body of Christ is received by the mouth "in pignus et certificationem resurrectionis nostrorum corporum ex mortuis;" on which Philippi remarks that those words do not imply any "immediate corporeal operation or any implanting in us of a germ of a resurrection body. They only teach that this sacrament is a pledge of our resurrection; and as this idea is introduced only in one place in the acknowledged standards of the Church, and there only incidentally, it is to be considered as a subordinate matter. The main point is the pledge of the pardon of sin and of eternal life which includes an assurance of the resurrection of the body."
According to the standards of the Reformed Church, therefore: The Lord's Supper is a holy ordinance instituted by Christ; as a memorial of his death, wherein, under the symbols of bread and wine, his body as broken and his blood as shed for the remission of sins, are signified, and, by the power of the Holy Ghost, sealed and applied to believers; whereby their union with Christ and their mutual
fellowship are set forth and confirmed, their faith strengthened, and their souls nourished unto eternal life.
Christ is really present to his people in this sacrament, not bodily, but in spirit; not in the sense of local nearness, but of efficacious operation. They receive Him, not with the mouth but by faith; they receive his flesh and blood, not as flesh, not as material particles, not its human life, not the supernatural influence of his glorified body in heaven; but his body as broken and his blood as shed. The union thus signified and effected is not a corporeal union, not a mixture of substances, but a spiritual and mystical union due to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The efficacy of this sacrament, as a means of grace, is not in the signs, nor in the service, nor in the minister, nor in the word, but in the attending influence of the Holy Ghost.
§ 17. Modern Views concerning the Lord's Supper
The modern philosophy has introduced certain principles as to the nature of God and his relation to the world, and as to the nature of man and his relation to God, which when applied to Christian doctrines have produced a revolution in theology. It has already been shown that the principles of this philosophy in their application to the origin and present state of man, to the person and work of Christ, and to the way in which men are made partakers of his salvation, have introduced a method of presenting the gospel utterly unintelligible to those unacquainted with the modern speculations. The word philosophy is to be understood in a sense wide enough to include a great diversity of systems, which although they have certain principles in common, differ widely from each other. They belong to two general classes, the pantheistic and theistic, which merge off into each other in every variety of form, and in different degrees of approximation towards identity.
According to the pantheistic theory, the world is the ever varying and unfolding existence form of God; and man is the form in which He comes to consciousness on this earth. According to the theistic
theory, the world owes its existence to the will of God, in which He is immanent and of which He is the life. Man is the form in which generic humanity is manifested in connection with a given corporeal organization. On neither view is there any real dualism between God and the world, or God and man except as occasioned by sin. The oneness of God and man is affirmed by both classes, by Cousin and Ullman for example, with equal earnestness. This is a oneness which admits of diversity; it is a unity in plurality; but it is a oneness of life; and such a unity of nature that God may become man, and man God.
The individuality or personality of man depends on the body. Generic humanity is not in itself a person. It becomes personal only by its union with an organized body. It loses its personality when it has no body; and therefore the immortality of the soul, as distinct from the body, is pronounced by Olshausen an anti-Christian or pagan idea. Whatever of conscious existence the soul has between death and the resurrection must be connection with its body, which is not the prison, or garment, or shell, or hull of the soul; it is not in any way one form of existence and the soul another; both form one life. The soul to be complete to develop itself, as a soul, must externalize itself, throw itself out in space; and this externalization is the body. All is one process, one and the same organic principle, dividing itself only that its unity may become the more free and intensely complete. The soul and body are one; one and the same organic principle.
The same principles are applied to the explanation of the doctrine of the person of Christ. According to the decisions of the ecumenical councils of Chalcedon and Constantinople, which have been accepted by all Christendom, the Eternal Son of God became man by taking to Himself a true body and a reasonable soul, and so was, and continues to be, both God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever. By nature (φύσις) is meant substance (οὐσία), as these words are used interchangeably. By the one nature He is consubstantial with us men; and by the other He is consubstantial with the Father.
This dualism, this hypostatic union of two distinct substances in the person of Christ, involves, as taught by those councils and believed by all Christendom, two ἐνέργειαι, two operations, two wills. There is no mixture or confusion of these two natures; no transfer of the properties of the one to the other, but each retains its own peculiar attributes.
On the other hand, the modern German theology rejects this distinction of natures in Christ. It denies all dualism in the constitution of his person. It teaches that Christ did not assume "a reasonable soul" into personal union with Himself, but either that He himself became, by a process of self-limitation, such a soul, or that He assumed generic humanity, so that He did not become a man, but the man. His assumption of humanity was something general, and not merely particular. The Word became flesh; not a single man only as one of many; but flesh or humanity in its universal conception; otherwise He could not be the principle of a new order of existence for the human world as such. By this assumption of humanity, the divine and human, God and man, become one in such a sense as to exclude all dualism. There are not a divine and a human, but there is a theanthropic, or divine-human nature or life. As in man there is not one life of the body and another of the soul, but the two are one and the same organic principle, so in the case of Christ the divine and human are one and the same. The divine nature of Christ is at the same time human in the fullest sense. Humanity is never complete till it reaches his person. It includes in its very constitution a struggle towards the form in which it is here exhibited, and can never rest until this end is attained. Our nature reaches after a true and real union with the nature of God, as the necessary complement and consummation of its own life. The idea which it embodied can never be fully actualized under any other form. The incarnation, then, is the proper completion of humanity. Christ is the true ideal man. Here is reached ultimately the highest summit of human life, which is of course the crowning sense of the word, or that in which it finds its last and full significance.
The first man, Adam, is to be viewed under a twofold character. In one respect he was simply a man; in another, he was the man, in whose person was included the whole human race. His individual personality was limited wholly to himself; but a whole world of like separate personalities lay involved in his life, at the same time, as a generic principle or root. All these in a deep sense, form at last but one and the same life. Adam lives in his posterity as truly as he ever lived in his own person. They participate in his whole nature, soul and body, and are truly bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. So the life of Christ is to be viewed under the same twofold aspect. He, as was Adam, is an individual person. But as Adam included in himself the race, he included all other human persons in his life; so Christ, having assumed generic humanity into personal union with Himself, includes in a still higher sense a world of other personalities. "He was Himself the race." He has assumed generic humanity into personal union with Himself and thereby rendered it divine; it is indeed a true human life, but it is nevertheless divine. It is one life; not the life of the Logos separately considered, but the life of the Word made flesh. He was man more perfectly than Adam himself, before the fall; humanity stood revealed in Him under its most perfect form. The humanity which He assumed was not new, but the humanity of Adam raised to a higher character, and filled with new meaning and power, by its union with the divine nature. The identity of Adam and his race is not material. Not a particle of Adam's body has come into ours. The identity resolves itself into an invisible law; and it is not one law for the body and another law for the soul; but one and the same law involves the presence of both, as the power of a common life. Where the law works, there Adam's life is reproduced, body and soul together. And still the individual Adam is not blended with his posterity in any such way as to lose his own personality or to swallow up theirs. His identity with his posterity is generic; but none the less real or close on that account. The case in regard to Christ and his people is analogous. His life, generic humanity as united in one life with the divine in his person passes over to his people. And as the race of individual men is developed by a regular, natural, organic process from the generic humanity in the person of Adam, so the life
of Christ rests not in his separate person, but passes over to his people; this takes place in the way of history, growth, or regular living development. In regeneration we become partakers of this new principle of life, that is, of generic humanity as united with the divine nature, which involves a participation of the entire humanity of Christ. We are not joined in a real life unity with the everlasting Logos, apart from Christ's manhood, in the way of direct personal inbeing. This would make us equal with Christ. The mystical union would then be the hypostatical union itself repeated in the person of every believer. It is not the divine life of the Logos as such, but the theanthropic life of Christ which passes over to his people. "The personality of the Son," says Olshausen "as comprehensive, includes in itself all the personalities of his people and pervades them with his own life, as the living centre of an organism, from which life flows forth and to which it returns."
The life which is thus conveyed to us is a true human life, controlling not only the soul but also the body. It is corporeal as well as incorporeal. It must put on an outward form and project itself in space. It is to be remembered that human life is not to be split into two lives, one of the body and another of the soul, thus constituting a dualism in our nature, instead of the absolute unity which belongs to it in fact. Soul and body, are, in their ground, but one life; identical in their origin; bound together by interpenetration subsequently at every point, and holding together in the presence and power of the same organic law. The life of Christ, lodged in us, works in us according to the law which it includes in its own constitution. That is, it works as a human life; and as such becomes the law of regeneration in the body as truly as in the soul. This does not suppose any actual approach of Christ's body to the persons of his people; nor any ubiquity or idealistic dissipation of that body; nor any fusion of this personality with ours. We must distinguish between the simple man and the universal man, here joined in the same person. Adam was an individual and the whole race. There is no dissipation of Christ's personality into the general consciousness of the Church involved in the affirmation that his person forms the
ground, out of which and in the power of which only, the whole life of the Church continually subsists. In this view Christ is personally present always in the Church, that is, of course, in the power of his divine nature. But his divine nature is at the same time human, in the fullest sense, and wherever his presence is revealed in a real way, it includes the person necessarily under the one aspect as well as under the other; with all this, however, which is something very different from the conception of a proper ubiquity in the case of Christ's body, we do not relinquish the thought of his separate human individuality. We distinguish between his universal humanity in the Church, and his humanity as a particular man, whom the heavens have received till the time of the restitution of all things. His glorified body, we doubt not, is possessed of qualities, attributes, and powers, that transcend immeasurably all we know or can think of a human body here. Still it is a body, a particular human body, having organized parts and an outward form. As such of course it must be defined and circumscribed by local limits, and cannot be supposed to be present in different places at the same time.
The life of Christ as communicated to his people is a true human life; and all life, in the case of man, is actualized, and can be actualized, only in the way of process or gradual historical development. All that belongs, then, to the new life of the Christian, conceived as complete at the last day, must be allowed to be involved in it as principle and process from the beginning. In every stage of its progress it is a true human life answerable to the nature of its organic root, and to the nature also of the subject in which it is lodged. The bodies of the saints in glory will be only the last result, in organic continuity, of the divine life of Christ implanted in their souls at their regeneration. There is nothing abrupt in Christianity. It is a supernatural constitution indeed; but as such it is clothed in a natural form, and involves in itself as regular a law of historical development, as the old creation itself. The resurrection body will be simply the ultimate outburst of the life that had been ripening for immortality under cover of the old Adamic nature before. The winged psyche has its elemental organization in the worm, and does not lose it in the tomb-
like chrysalis. The resurrection of the body is, therefore, as much a natural process as the development of the butterfly from the grub, or the flower from the seed.
Applications of these Principles to the Lord's Supper
It is obvious that as the principles above stated must modify the whole method, and, so to speak, theory of salvation, so they must also determine the view taken of the Lord's Supper. They necessarily exclude the Romish doctrine of transubstantiation; and the Lutheran doctrine that the real natural body and blood of Christ are present in, with, and under the bread and wine in this sacrament, and received after a corporal manner ("corporaliter") by the mouth. No less obviously do they exclude the doctrine of Calvin that what is received by the believer in the Lord's Supper is a supernatural influence emanating from the glorified body of Christ in heaven. In like manner they exclude the Reformed doctrine that what is received are the sacrificial benefits of the broken body of Christ, which benefits are not only the forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with God, but the indwelling of the Holy Spirit by which we are united to Christ and made partakers of his salvation. As our redemption, according to this theory, is effected by introducing into the centre of our being a new principle of life, a new organic law, which by its operation and gradual development works out our salvation; and as this new life is generic humanity united with the divine nature of Christ so as to become truly divine while it is still truly human, and yet only one and the same life, it follows that it is not the body and blood of Christ, but his theanthropic nature that we receive in the Holy Communion.
We are therefore told that the real communication which believers have with Christ in the Holy Supper, extends to his whole person. To be real and not simply moral, it must be thus comprehensive. We may divide Christ in our thoughts, abstracting his divinity from his humanity, or his soul from his body. But no such dualism has place in his actual person—that is, no dualism between his divinity and humanity, or, between his soul and body. If therefore He be received
by us at all, He must be received in a whole way. We partake not of certain rights and privileges only, which have been secured for us by the breaking of his body and the shedding of his blood, but of the veritable substantial life of the beloved Immanuel Himself, as the fountain and channel by which alone all these benefits can be conveyed into our souls. We partake not of his divinity only, nor yet of his Spirit as separate from Himself, but also of his true and proper humanity. Not of his humanity in a separate form, his flesh and blood disjoined from his Spirit; but of the one life which is the union of both—Spirit in such connections seems to stand not for the Holy Spirit, but for the divine nature of Christ, for the life of Christ is not the union of the Holy Spirit with his humanity—and in virtue of which the presence of the one must ever involve in the same form, and to the same extent, the presence of the other. What we receive is therefore his whole life, as a single undivided form of his existence, by one and the same process. The participation of Christ's life in the sacrament is in no sense corporeal, but altogether spiritual, as the necessary condition of its being real. It is the soul or spirit of the believer that is immediately fed with the grace which is conveyed to it mystically in the holy ordinance. But this is in fact a fruition which belongs to the entire man, for the life made over to him under such central form, becomes at once in virtue of its own human character, and of the human character of the believer himself, a renovating force which reaches out into his person on all sides, and fills with its presence the totality of his nature.
The same system substantially is unfolded by Ebrard in his "Christliche Dogmatik." What is taught concerning the Lord's Supper presupposes what is taught of the nature of man and of the person of Christ. In the sacrament of the supper we are united to Christ; but the nature of our union with Christ depends upon the nature of the parties to that union. Humanity as a generic life developed from Adam as its root and centre, being corrupted by sin, is healed by its union with the divine nature in the person of Christ, or according to Ebrard's mode of representation, by the Logos becoming a man by a process of self-limitation. Every man from the first moment of his
existence possesses "ein substantielles Centrum seines mikrokosmischen Lebens, … ein Centrum, welches da war, ehe der Mensch bewusste Gedanken hatte, und welches bleiben wird, wenn der Leib dem Tode verfällt, welches also an sich weder Gedanke (mens) noch materieller Stoff ist." That is, every man has from the commencement of his being "a substantial centre of life, which precedes conscious mental activity, and which will remain when the body dies, and therefore in itself is neither mind (mens) nor matter." This life-centre is instinct with a force which develops itself as mind and body, physically and psychologically. It is the Ego, the personality. It is the seat of regeneration which consists in introducing into this substantial centre of our being a new organic law which gives rise to a new development. This new law, or principle of life is the substance of Christ. Herein consists the mystical union. "This union is a central, that is, an organic union between the soul-centre, (seelischen Centrum) of the exalted Incarnate one and our soul-centre, so that Christ from our centre pervades, controls, and sanctifies, both our physical-somatic, and our noetic life." A few lines further on it is said, "This communication is real, not imaginary, … in that before all our thought, the substantial centre of our physical and noetic life is organically united with Christ's centre, [so that in the Lord's Supper] we receive a new communication of the substance (Substanzmittheilung] of the glorified Son of man."2 What is communicated is sometimes said to be "the person of Christ," sometimes "the whole Christ," sometimes "his life," sometimes "his whole human life," and sometimes the "organic law of Christ's human life." The Lord's Supper, therefore, is by Ebrard declared to be an ordinance "wherein Christ renews the mystical union, the real life-bond, with his people, in that He renewedly implants Himself, his person, and glorified humanity in them, objectively, really, and centrally, and thus confirms and renews their participation in the benefits of his death."
This theory repudiates the doctrine of transubstantiation, the Lutheran doctrine of oral manducation of the true, natural body and blood of Christ; the Calvinistic idea of an emanation from the
glorified body of Christ, the Reformed doctrine of the reception of the benefits of Christ's sacrificial death, and of Christ Himself by the indwelling of his Spirit, and insists on the communication of the divine humanity of Christ to the soul of the believer as a new organic law, somewhat in the same way as magnetism is added to iron as a new controlling law. Philippi reviews the exhibitions of the doctrine of the eucharist given by the leading German theologians from Schleiermacher to Lange. The epithet of "mystic-theosophical," which he applies to the doctrine of Lange, applies with more or less propriety to all the modern German theories. They are unintelligible to the majority of educated men, and as to the poor, for whom the gospel is especially designed, they are absolutely meaningless.
Remarks
As the theory above referred to, in its main features has been repeatedly brought under review in these pages, there is the less need for any remarks in its application to the doctrine of the Lord's Supper. It may be sufficient to call attention to the following points: —
1. If there be no such thing as generic humanity, no such objective reality; if Adam were not the human race; if he and his posterity are not identical in such a sense that his acts were their acts as truly as they were his own; in other words, if the scholastic doctrine of realism, which until of late, has been regarded as utterly exploded, be not true, then this whole theory collapses. Its foundation is gone.
2. If it be not true that in man the soul and body are one; one living substance developing itself under two aspects, so that there can be no soul without a body; if in the person of Christ there are two substances or natures hypostatically united, and not only one nature and life, so that his divine nature is in the fullest sense human, and his human, divine, then again the whole foundation of the theory is gone; then there can be no communication of his divine humanity or theanthropic life to his people to be in them the germ of a new life,
noetic and somatic, to be historically developed as was the nature derived from Adam, until it issues in the resurrection and final consummation.
3. It is to be remembered that it is said that this generic humanity which constitutes the identity between Adam and his race which is the analogue of the mystical union between Christ and his people, resolves itself into "an invisible law." Now what does that mean? What is a law? In the lips of philosophers and scientists the word law often means nothing more than a fact. What are the laws of Kepler but facts? By the laws of nature is often meant nothing more than generalizations concerning the orderly sequence of events. At other times a law means a uniformly acting force. An organic law is a force uniformly acting to produce a given organic result. The germ of a bird and of a fish are undistinguishable by the microscope or by chemical agents; yet by an organic law, a uniformly acting force, the one develops into a bird, the other into a fish. What then is meant by saying that generic humanity resolves itself in a law? Can it mean anything more than a uniformly acting force? Then when it is said that generic humanity as united with the divine nature, so as to become itself divine while it continues human, is communicated to us, does it mean anything more than that a new uniformly acting force is implanted in our nature, as when the magnetic force is introduced into a piece of iron—an illustration, obviously imperfect indeed, used by the advocates of the theory? Then what becomes of a personally present Christ? All Christ does for us is to implant a new law in our nature, which by its natural, historical development works out our salvation. It is this aspect of the case that made the German opposers of Schleiermacher, say that after all he had a Christ that was, but is not now. Christ appeared in the world, and produced a certain effect, and then passed away, leaving nothing but his memory. It is not said that the advocates of the theory in question view the matter in this light; but it is said that some of the first minds among his countrymen regarded this as the logical consequence of Schleiermacher's system. That system passed in Germany for what it
was worth, an ingenious philosophical theory. In this country it is propounded as the truth of God.
4. It is a part of the theory under consideration that we become partakers of Christ's redemption only in virtue of our participation of his life. His life brings with it his merit and his power. He is our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption only so far as, and only because, we become subjectively wise, righteous, holy, and free from the consequences of our sins. It is the Christ within us and not the Christ without us and above us, that is our confidence and glory. It is hard to see on this theory what meaning there is in praying to Christ for his intercession, his guidance, his protection, or his love. He has implanted a new law within us which works out our salvation by just as natural a process of development, as that by which a seed expands into plant and flower. It is not for other men to say how a theory lies in the minds of its advocates, or to sit in judgment on their religious experience; but they have the right to protest against any theory which, in their apprehension of it, takes away their personal Saviour and gives them nothing but a new invisible law in their members; which substitutes for the Incarnate Son of God "the organic law of Christ's human life."
5. This new doctrine is a philosophy; and philosophy we know from an infallible authority, is a vain deceit. It is vain (κενή) empty; void of truth, weightless and worthless. It is moreover, a deceit; it disappoints and misleads. This is not said of natural philosophy, which concerns itself with the facts and laws of nature; nor of moral philosophy, which treats of the phenomena and laws of our moral nature; nor of intellectual philosophy, which deals with the operations and laws of mind as revealed in consciousness. But it is said of speculative philosophy; of every system which undertakes to determine on à priori speculative principles, the nature of God, the origin and constitution of the universe, the nature of man and of his relation to God, or to use common language, of the finite to the infinite. It was the oriental philosophy which the Spirit of God by the pen of St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Colossians, pronounced "a vain
deceit." He says the same thing in the Epistle to the Corinthians of the Greek philosophy, whether Eleatic or Platonic. This judgment of inspiration is confirmed by experience. Who now cares a straw for the speculations of the ancients, of the schoolmen, or of their modern successors. Who is now a Hegelian? Forty years ago, who was not? We were told then, as we are told now, that certain scientific principles have a right to be respected and employed in the exposition of the doctrine of the Bible. But what is called science—in the sphere of speculation—in one age, is repudiated as nonsense in another. No philosophy has the right to control or modify the exposition of the doctrines of the Bible, except the philosophy of the Bible itself; that is, the principles which are therein asserted or assumed.
§ 18. The Lutheran Doctrine concerning the Lord's Supper
Protestants at the time of the Reformation agreed on all the great doctrines of the Gospel. Luther was as thorough an Augustinian as Calvin. There would have been no schism had it not been for the difference of views which gradually arose on the true nature of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. And even on this point, such was the desire to avoid division, and such the spirit of concession manifested by the Reformed, that a schism would have been avoided, had it not been that Luther insisted on the adoption of the very words in which he stated his doctrine on the subject. That there was a real difference between the parties must be admitted, but that difference was not such as to justify a division in the ranks of Protestants; and the Reformed were willing to adopt a mode of stating the doctrine which both parties could receive without a violation of conscience. One attempt after another designed to effect a compromise failed, and the Lutherans and Reformed separated into two ecclesiastical denominations, and so remain at the present time. In the Evangelical Church of Prussia under the pressure of the government, the two parties have been brought into one Church which comprehends the greater part of the people. But beyond the limits of Prussia the two
Churches remain distinct, though no longer in a state of mutual alienation.
Luther took his stand on the words of Christ, "This is my body," which he insisted must be understood literally. He would admit of no figure in the subject, copula, or predicate. Christ affirmed that "This," that which I hold in my hand, and which I give you to eat, is my body. This position having been assumed it necessarily led to a statement of what is meant by the body and blood of Christ; in what sense the bread is his body and the wine his blood; how they are given and received; and what are the effects of such reception. On all these points the surest sources of information on the real doctrine of the Lutheran Church is to be found in its authorized symbols.
Statement of the Doctrine in the Symbolical Books
The tenth article of the first part of the Augsburg Confession is very short, and is couched in language which Calvin would not, and did not, hesitate to adopt. "De Cœna Domini docent, quod corpus et sanguis Christi vere adsint et distribuantur vescentibus in Cœna Domini, et improbant secus docentes."
The language of the Apology is more explicit: "Decimus articulus approbatus est, in quo confitemur, nos sentire, quod in Cœna Domini vere et substantialiter adsint corpus et sanguis Christi, et vere exhibeantur cum illis rebus, quæ videntur, pane et vino, his, qui sacramentum accipiunt." "Non negamus recta nos fide caritateque sincera Christo spiritualiter conjungi; sed nullam nobis conjunctionis rationem secundum carnem cum illo esse, id profecto pernegamus, idque a divinis Scripturis omnino alienum dicimus."
In the Smalcald Articles it is said: "De sacramento altaris sentimus, panem et vinum in Cœna esse verum corpus et sanguinem Christi, et non tantum dari et sumi a piis, sed etiam impiis christianis."
"De transubstantione subtilitatem sophisticam nihil curamus, qua fingunt, panem et vinum relinquere et amittere naturalem suam
substantiam, et tantum speciem et colorem panis, et non verum panem remanere. Optime enim cum sacra Scriptura congruit, quod panis adsit et maneat, sicut Paulus ipse nominat: Panis quem frangimus. Et: Ita edat de pane."
In the Smaller Catechism it is asked: "Quid est sacramentum altaris? Responsio. Sacramentum altaris est verum corpus et verus sanguis Domini nostri Jesu Christi, sub pane et vino, nobis Christianis ad manducandum ac bibendum ab ipso Christo institutum. Quid vero prodest, sic comedisse et bibisse? Responsio. Id indicant nobis hæc verba: Pro vobis datur; et: Effunditur in remissionem peccatorum. Nempe quod nobis per verba illa in sacramento remissio peccatorum, vita, justitia et salus donentur. Ubi enim remissio peccatorum est, ibi est et vita et salus. Qui potest corporalis illa manducatio tantas res efficere? Responsio. Manducare et bibere ista certe non efficiunt, sed illa verba, quæ hic ponuntur: Pro vobis datur, et: Effunditur in remissionem peccatorum; quæ verba sunt una cum corporali manducatione caput et summa hujus sacramenti. Et qui credit his verbis, ille habet, quod dicunt, et sicut sonant, nempe remissionem peccatorum."
Luther in his Larger Catechism enlarges on all these points; answers various objections to his doctrine; insists upon the necessity of faith in order to the profitable reception of the ordinance; and exhorts to frequent attendance on the ordinance.
The Form of Concord gives the affirmative statement of the doctrine; and then the negation of all the opposing views. It affirms: First, the true and substantial presence of the body and blood of Christ in this sacrament. Second, that the words of institution are to be understood literally, so that the bread does not signify the absent body, nor the wine the absent blood of Christ, but on account of the sacramental union "panis et vinum vere sint corpus et sanguis Christi." Third, that the cause of this presence is not the consecration by man, but is due solely to the omnipotent power of our Lord Jesus Christ. Fourth, the prescribed words of institution are on no account to be omitted.
Fifth, the fundamental principles on which the doctrine rests are, (1.) That Jesus Christ is inseparably true, essential, natural, perfect God and man in one person. (2.) That the right hand of God is everywhere, and, therefore, Christ, "ratione humanitatis suæ," being truly and actually at the right hand of God is, as to his humanity, everywhere present. (3.) "Quod verbum Dei non est falsum, aut mendax." (4.) That God knows, and has in his power various modes of presence, and is not bound to that particular mode which philosophers are accustomed to call local or circumscriptive. Sixth, that the body and blood of Christ are received not only spiritually by faith, but also by the mouth, yet not "capernaitice," but in a supernatural and celestial way, as sacramentally united with the bread and wine. Seventh, that not only the worthy and believing, but also the unworthy and unbelieving communicants received the body and blood of Christ in this sacrament. Such are the most important affirmations concerning the Lord's Supper.
The Form of Concord, on the other hand, denies or rejects, (1.) The papal doctrine of transubstantiation. (2.) The doctrine of the sacrifice of the Mass. (3.) The withholding the cup from the laity. (4.) The figurative interpretation of the words of institution. (5.) The doctrine that the body of Christ is not received by the mouth. (6.) That the bread and wine are only symbols or signs of a Christian profession. (7.) That the bread and wine are only symbols, signs, or types of the absent body of Christ. (8.) That they are merely signs and seals by which our faith is confirmed, by being directed heavenward, and there made partaker of the body and blood of Christ. (9.) That our faith is strengthened by receiving the bread and wine and not by the true body and blood really present in the supper. (10.) That in the sacrament only the virtue, efficacy, and merit of the absent body and blood are dispensed. (11.) That the body of Christ is so shut up in heaven, that "nullo prorsus modo" can it be present at one and the same time in many or all places where the Lord's Supper is celebrated. (12.) That Christ could not have promised or offered the presence of his body in the eucharist, because such presence is inconsistent with the nature of a body. (13.) That God cannot by his
omnipotence make the body of Christ to be present in more than one place at the same time. (14.) That faith and not the omnipotent word of Christ, is the cause of the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the supper. (15.) That believers are to seek the Lord's body in heaven and not in the sacrament. (16.) That the impenitent and unbelievers do not receive the body and blood of Christ, but only the bread and wine. (17.) That the dignity of the communicants in this ordinance is not alone from true faith in Christ, but from some human source. (18.) That true believers may eat the Lord's Supper to condemnation if imperfect in their conversation. (19.) That the visible elements of bread and wine in this sacrament should be adored. (20.) Præter hæc justo Dei judicio relinquimus omnes curiosas, sannis virulentis tinctas, et blasphemas quæstiones, quæ honeste, pie et sine gravi offensione recitari nequeunt, aliosque sermones, quando de supernaturali et cœlesti mysterio hujus sacramenti crasse, carnaliter, capernaitice, et plane abominandis modis, blaspheme, et maximo cum ecclesiæ offendiculo, Sacramentarii loquuntur. (21.) Finally any corporal manducation of the body of Christ is denied, as though it was masticated by the teeth or digested as ordinary food. A supernatural manducation is again affirmed; a manducation which no one by his senses or reason can comprehend.
Although the Lutheran doctrine on this subject may be regarded as stated with sufficient clearness in the Epitome of the Form of Concord, it becomes still plainer by the more expanded and controversial exposition in the second, and much more extended portion of that document, called the "Solida Declaratio." The seventh chapter of that Declaration, in giving the "Status Controversiæ," between the Lutherans and the Reformed, says that although the Sacramentarians (as the Reformed were called) laboured to come as near as possible to the language of the Lutherans and used the same forms of expression, yet when pressed, it became apparent that their true meaning was very different. They admitted the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the supper, but it was a presence to faith. The real body of Christ is in heaven and not on earth; therefore they
denied that his body and blood, "in terra adesse," and taught that nothing in the sacrament is received by the mouth but the bread and wine. This is one point of difference between the Lutherans and the Reformed. The former teaching that the literal, natural body of Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, is actually present in, with, and under the bread, and his blood shed upon the cross and which was the life of his body while on earth, is present in, with, and under the consecrated wine. The latter teach that the natural body of Christ is in heaven, and is not on earth, and therefore is not present in the elements of bread and in the supper of the Lord. What is present, according to Calvin, is not the natural body and blood of Christ, but a supernatural, life-giving influence emanating from his glorified body in heaven, and conveyed to the believer by the power of the Holy Ghost. According to the Reformed generally, it is not this supernatural power of the glorified body of Christ that is present and received, but the sacrificial efficacy of his body broken and his blood shed for the remission of sins.
Secondly, as the thing received, according to the two doctrines, is different, so are the mode and organ and condition of reception. According to the Lutherans the body and blood are received "corporaliter;" the organ is the mouth; the only condition is the actual reception of the bread and wine. The body and blood of Christ are received equally by believers and unbelievers; although to their spiritual good only by the former. According to the Reformed, the mode of reception is not corporeal, but spiritual; the organ is not the mouth, but faith; and the condition of reception is the presence and exercise of faith on the part of the communicant. This point of difference is clearly recognized in the Form of Concord, when it says that the Reformed think that the body and blood of Christ, "tantum in cœlis, et præterea nullibi esse, ideoque Christum nobis cum pane et vino verum corpus et verum sanguinem manducandum et bibendum dare, spiritualiter, per fidem, sed non corporaliter ore sumendum."
Manducation
Thirdly, another point of difference, which the Form of Concord points out between the two Churches, concerns the manducation or eating which takes place in the Lord's Supper. Our Lord in the sixth chapter of St. John's Gospel, although not there treating of the Eucharist, says, that He is the true bread which came down from heaven, and that whosoever eateth of that bread shall live forever. And in the same chapter, with a change of language but not of meaning, He says, "The bread that I will give is my flesh." "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day." Such being the language of Christ, every Christian must admit that there is a sense in which the believer may properly be said to eat the flesh and to drink the blood of the Son of man. The only question is, What does such language mean? According to the Reformed the meaning is that it is the indispensable condition of eternal life, that we should receive Christ as He is offered to us in the gospel; and as He is there offered to us as a sacrifice for our sins, his body broken and his blood shed for us, we must receive and appropriate Him in that character. To receive Him as the true bread, and to eat of that bread, is to receive and appropriate Him as being to us the source of eternal life; and to eat his flesh and drink his blood is to receive and appropriate Him as the broken and bleeding sacrifice for our sins. In other words, to eat is to believe. The Form of Concord correctly recognizes this as the doctrine of the Reformed Church. It says, that the Reformed in rejecting the literal sense of the words "eat, this is my body," teach "ut edere corpus Christi nihil aliud ipsis significet, quam credere in Christum, et vocabulum corporis illis nil nisi symbolum, hoc est, signum seu figuram corporis Christi denotet, quod tamen non in terris in sacra cœna præsens, sed tantum in cœlis sit." That the Reformed are right in this matter may, in passing, be argued, (1.) From the fact that our Lord in John 6 interchanges as equivalent the words "eating" and "believing." He says, "If any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever;" and, "He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. I am that bread of life." The same specific effect is ascribed to eating and believing, and therefore the two words express
the same act. (2.) The eating spoken of is declared to be the indispensable condition of eternal life. "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you." But it is the clear doctrine of the Bible, and the common doctrine of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches, that the only eating which is necessary to eternal life is that which consists in believing. Lutherans are as far as the Reformed from making the sacramental eating of the body and blood of Christ in the supper essential to salvation. (3.) Nothing is essential to salvation under the new dispensation that was not essential under the old. This also is a part of the common faith of both Churches. But under the Old Testament there could be no other eating of the flesh of Christ, than believing on Him as the passover, or, lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world. (4.) Any corporal eating of the flesh of Christ's body and drinking of his blood, as He sat at table with his disciples, would seem to be inconceivable. (5.) Our Lord Himself, in opposition to the sense put upon his words by the people of Capernaum, said: "It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." It was not his literal flesh that He was to give us to eat, for that would profit nothing. His words, on that subject, were to be understood in a spiritual sense.
But although the Lutherans reject the doctrine of the Reformed who teach that the eating of the body of Christ in the sacrament is spiritual and by faith, and assert that it is corporal (corporaliter) and by the mouth, yet they strenuously resist the idea that it is after the manner of ordinary food. They maintain that the manner is supernatural and incomprehensible. The Lutherans distinguish between a spiritual manducation, of which says the Form of Concord, Christ treats especially in the sixth chapter of St. John, and which is by faith, and a sacramental manducation which is by the mouth, when in the Lord's Supper, "verum et substantiale corpus et sanguis Christi ore accipiuntur atque participantur ab omnibus, qui panem ilium benedictum et vinum in cœna Dominica edunt et bibunt." The words of Christ, it is said, "non potest nisi orali, non autem de crassa, carnali, capernaitica, sed de supernaturali et incomprehensibili
manducatione corporis Christi intelligi." Being incomprehensible, it is of course inexplicable.
However, although the Lutherans reject the idea that the body of Christ in the Lord's Supper is eaten after the manner of ordinary food, yet the language of Luther on this subject, adopted or defended by his followers, can hardly be understood in any other sense. In his instruction to Melancthon, he says, "Of our doctrine this is the sum, that the body of Christ is truly eaten in and with the bread, so that what the bread does and suffers, the body of Christ does and suffers; it is distributed, eaten, and masticated (zerbissen) by the teeth." On this passage Philippi4 remarks that as Luther says that this is propter unionem sacramentalem, it is not inconsistent with the language of the Form of Concord which denies that the body of Christ is lacerated by the teeth and digested as ordinary food. He says it is analogous to the proposition, God died, not as to his divine nature but as to his assumed human nature. The language of Luther on this subject is seldom now heard from the lips of Lutherans.
Mode of Presence
A thing is present where it is perceived and where it acts. The nature of that presence varies with the nature of the object of which it is affirmed. A body is present where it is perceived by the senses or acts upon them. The soul is present where it perceives and acts. It is somewhere, and not everywhere. God is present everywhere, as He fills immensity. There is no portion of space from which He is absent as to his essence, knowledge, or power. As the Lutherans affirm the presence of the substance of Christ's natural body and blood in the Lord's Supper, of that body which was born of the Virgin and suffered on the cross; and as that body was and is material, it would seem to follow that the presence affirmed is local. It is a presence in a definite place. The Reformed, therefore, always understood the Lutherans to assert the local presence of the body of Christ in the Lord's Supper. The Lutherans, however, deny that they teach any such presence. This after all may be a dispute about words.2 The
parties may take the word "local" in different senses. The Lutherans say that the body and blood of Christ are with, in, and under the bread and wine. They are held in the hand and taken into the mouth. This is all the Reformed mean when they speak of a local presence; a presence in a definite portion of space. Magnetism is locally present in the magnet; electricity in the Leyden jar. The soul is locally present in the body. The man is locally present in mind and body where he perceives and acts and where he is perceived and acted upon. Lutherans appear to take the word "local" in a sense in which it characterizes the presence of a body which is present exclusively, i.e., both in the sense of excluding all other bodies from the same portion of space, being bounded by it, and of being nowhere else. The Reformed say that it is contrary to the nature of such a body as that which belongs to man, that it should be in many places at the same time, much less that it should fill all space. The idea that the flesh and blood of Christ are omnipresent, seems to involve a contradiction. It is in vain to appeal to the omnipotence of God. Contradictions are not the objects of power. It is no more a limitation of the power of God to say that He cannot do the impossible, that He cannot make right wrong, or the finite infinite, than it is a limitation of his wisdom that He cannot teach the untrue or the unwise. All such assumptions destroy the idea of God as a rational Being. If the body and blood of Christ be everywhere present, then they are received in every ordinary meal as well as in the Lord's Supper. The answer which Lutherans give to this objection, namely, that it is one thing for the body of Christ to be omnipresent, and another for it to be accessible, or everywhere given, is unsatisfactory; because the virtue resides in the body and blood, and if they are everywhere present and received they are everywhere operative, at least to believers. If this omnipresence of the body of Christ was actual only after his ascension, then, as Müller argues, the Apostles must, at the institution of the Lord's Supper, have partaken of his body and blood in a manner peculiar to that one occasion, and Christ, so far as other Christians are concerned, only foretold that his body would be ubiquitous and therefore present in the eucharist. Luther, therefore, says, "If Christ at the Last Supper had not uttered the words 'this is
my body,' yet the words, Christ sits at the right hand of God, prove that his body and blood may be in the Lord's Supper as well as everywhere else."2 As Christ in his human nature and therefore in his human body sits at the right hand of God; and as the right hand of God is everywhere, his body must be everywhere, and therefore in the bread as used in the sacrament. The current representations, however, of the Lutheran theologians on this point are, that the presence of the body of Christ in the Lord's Supper is peculiar, something which occurs there and nowhere else. This presence is due, not to the words of consecration as uttered by the minister, but to the almighty power which attended the original utterance of the words, This is my body, and continues to operate whenever and wherever this sacrament is administered.
This presence of the body and blood of Christ in, with, and ander the bread and wine has been generally expressed by non-Lutherans by the word consubstantiation, as distinguished from the Romish doctrine of transubstantiation. The propriety of this word to express the doctrine of Luther is admitted by Philippi, if it be understood to mean, what in fact is meant by it when used by the Reformed, "das reale Zusammensein beider Substanzen," i.e., the real coexistence of the two substances, the earthly and the heavenly. But Lutherans generally object to the word because it is often used to express the idea of the mixing two substances so as to form a third; or the local inclusion of the one substance by the other.
The Lutheran doctrine of the mode of the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the eucharist, is thus carefully stated by Gerhard: "Quam vere in sacra cœna præsens est res terrena, panis et vinum: tam vere etiam præsens res cœlestis, corpus et sanguis Christi: proinde credimus, docemus et confitemur in eucharistiæ sacramento veram, realem et substantialem corporis et sanguinis Christi præsentiam, exhibitionem, manducationem et bibitionem, quæ præsentia non est essentialis conversio panis in corpus et vini in sanguinem Christi, quam transubstantionem vocant, neque est corporis ad panem, ac sanguinis ad vinum extra usum cœnæ localis
aut durabilis, neque est panis et corporis Christi personalis unio, qualis est divinæ et humanæ naturæ Christo unio, neque est localis inclusio corporis in panem, neque est impanatio, neque est incorporatio in panem, neque est consubstantio, qua panis cum corpore Christi, et vinum cum ipsius sanguine in unam massam physicam coalescat: neque est naturalis inexistentia, neque delitescentia corpusculi sub pane, neque quidquam hujusmodi carnale aut physicum; sed est præsentia et unio sacramentalis, quæ ita comparata est, ut juxta ipsius salvatoris nostri, veracis, sapientis, et omnipotentis institutionem, pani benedicto tanquam medio divinitus ordinato corpus: et vino benedicto tanquam medio itidem divinitus ordinato, sanguis Christi modo nobis incomprehensibili uniatur, ut cum illo pane corpus Christi una manducatione sacramentali et cum illo vino sanguinem Christi una bibitione sacramentali in sublimi mysterio sumamus, manducemus ac bibamus. Breviter non ἀπουσίαν absentiam, non ἐνουσίαν inexistentiam, non συνουσίαν consubstantionem, non μετουσίαν transubstantionem, sed παρουσίαν corporis et sanguinis Christi in sacra cœna statuimus."