Pastor's Conference at Bethlehem, North Zulch

May 6, 1999

Rev. A. J. Loeschman

Introduction

My interest in studying the Words of Institution was recently revived by some discussions that our Circuit Pastor's Conference had and other discussions that were going on a year or so ago on an email discussion group that I belong to. I was hearing terminology and concepts that I had not heard before. Of course, I graduated from the seminary in 1965 and knew it all at that time, so I had not had any reason to go over this vitally important material again. Pieper said it, that settled it.

However, I was unnerved and unable to answer definitively the comments and connections that some of you trusted friends and my compadres on the list were saying. Were these ideas something old or new? Why had I never heard them before? Where is the answer to the questions I was having?

Naturally, the very Words of Jesus Christ that He spoke to put into effect the means of grace we know as the Lord's Supper, would be a good starting place. As I studied and reflected and read some questions that I had never asked or never had reason to ask came to mind.

The Confessions speak about the importance of the Word's of Institution.

Now, since Dr. Luther is to be regarded as the most distinguished teacher of the churches which confess the Augsburg Confession, whose entire doctrine as to sum and substance is comprised in the articles of the frequently mentioned Augsburg Confession, and was presented to the Emperor Charles V, the proper meaning and sense of the oft-mentioned Augsburg Confession can and should be derived from no other source more properly and correctly than from the doctrinal and polemical writings of Dr. Luther.

And, indeed, this very opinion, just cited, is founded upon the only firm, immovable, and indubitable rock of truth, from the words of institution, in the holy, divine Word, and was thus understood, taught, and propagated by the holy evangelists and apostles, and their disciples and hearers.

Now, all the circumstances of the institution of the Holy Supper testify that these words of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, which in themselves are simple, plain, clear, firm, and indubitable, cannot and must not be understood otherwise than in their usual, proper, and common signification.

Now, surely there is no interpreter of the words of Jesus Christ as faithful and sure as the Lord Christ Himself, who understands best His words and His heart and opinion, and who is the wisest and most knowing for expounding them; and here, as in the making of His last will and testament and of His everabiding covenant and union, as elsewhere in [presenting and confirming) all articles of faith, and in the institution of all other signs of the covenant and of grace or sacraments, as [for example] circumcision, the various offerings in the Old Testament and Holy Baptism, He uses not allegorical, but entirely proper, simple, indubitable, and clear words; and in order that no misunderstanding can occur, He explains them more clearly with the words: Given for you, shed for you. 51] He also allows His disciples to rest in the simple, proper sense, and commands them that they should thus teach all nations to observe what He had commanded them, the apostles.

Now, surely there is no interpreter of the words of Jesus Christ as faithful and sure as the Lord Christ Himself, who understands best His words and His heart and opinion, and who is the wisest and most knowing for expounding them; and here, as in the making of His last will and testament and of His everabiding covenant and union, as elsewhere in [presenting and confirming) all articles of faith, and in the institution of all other signs of the covenant and of grace or sacraments, as [for example] circumcision, the various offerings in the Old Testament and Holy Baptism, He uses not allegorical, but entirely proper, simple, indubitable, and clear words; and in order that no misunderstanding can occur, He explains them more clearly with the words: Given for you, shed for you.

For this reason, too, all three evangelists, Matt. 26, 26; Mark 14, 22; Luke 22, 19, and St. Paul, who received the same [the institution of the Lord�s Supper] after the ascension of Christ [from Christ Himself], 1 Cor. 11, 24, unanimously and with the same words and syllables repeat concerning the consecrated and distributed bread these distinct, clear, firm, and true words of Christ: This is My body, altogether in one way, without any interpretation [trope, figure] and change.

Bente, F., Concordia Triglotta, (Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Northwestern Publishing House) 1997.

These citations make three points very forcefully: One, that the Words of Institution are the hingepin of the understanding of the Lord's Supper and Two, that these words of Jesus are plain, simple and clear in what they say about the Sacrament and Three, that that is why Lutherans believe what they believe about the Supper..

Then the reprint of the Sasse anthology "We Confess" with its wonderful second section on "We Confess the Sacraments" became available. Much of my research had been done by a scholar much more capable than I. His article "The Lord's Supper in the New Testament"(1941) is the exact material that I sought, in fact, in even more detail.

Still, I want to give some of my own work in my own format, so I will add comments from Sasse along with some of the results of my personal study.

Matthew 26:26-28

Having eaten Jesus himself took bread and blessing (it), broke (it) and gave to the disciples; he said: "Take, eat, this is the body of myself." And taking the cup and having blessed (it), gave to the saying: "Drink from it, all (of you), for this is the blood of the testament of myself which is poured out to atone for you for the forgiveness of sins

,6PL<<@�,<@< - pres. pass. part.

B,D4 - with ��"DJ4" = to take away or atone for (AG page 650)

Mark 26:22-24

And having eaten, he, having taken the bread, and blessing, broke and gave to them and said: "Take, this is the body of myself. And taking a cup, giving thanks, he gave to them, and they all drank of it. Then he said to them : "This is the blood of the testament of myself which is poured out for many.

Luke 22:19-20

And taking bread, giving thanks, he broke and gave to them saying: "This is the body of myself, which is given for you. Do this in memory of me." And the cup similarly after the meal, saying: "This is the cup of the new testament in my blood, which is poured out for you

I Cor 11:23-26

For I (emphatic) received from the Lord which I also handed down to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night in which he was delivered over, took bread and giving thanks, broke and said: "This is my body which is for you. Do this in memory of me." Similarly also the cup after the meal, saying, "This is the cup of the new testament in my blood. Do this every time you drink in my memory." For every time you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes."

Hermaneutical principles

Historical grammatical

This is the kind of Waltherian principles that I grew up with, was taught were wrong at the seminary in the 60s, but came back to as I started real life in the parishes I served. The basic one is "Scripture interprets Scripture." You all know the rest.

"... I simply confess truly and openly that I embrace and approve the judgement of those churches which acknowledge and teach the true and substantial presence of the body and blood in the Supper in that sense which the words of the Supper give in their simple, proper, and genuine

meaning." Chemnitz, Examination of the Council of Trent, Part II, p 222

We agree to the Waltherian proposition that we do not interpret the Confessions according to the Scriptures, we interpret the Scriptures according to the Confessions. For only that can be interpreted according to Scripture which is essentially the same as Scripture. Which is to say that we cannot say, "The Bible has the final word over the Confessions" or that the norma normans/norma normata distinction is maintained to show which wins in a debate between the two. For to say that the Confessions are a true and correct interpretation of the Scriptures is to say that they say what the Scripture says.

"If the whole of Scriptures is Christological, then the whole of Scriptures is eucharistic." John Fenton. Now I am much too unphilosophical to be able to understand this kind of pronouncement by this high church liturgical expert. I would more likely agree that since the former is true, the whole of Scriptures is sacramental. However, this seems to me to put an a priori condition before the Scriptures that would color one's understanding. I prefer to hold to Walther's principles of interpretation than any of these new hermaneutical suggestions.

Some Questions to be discussed re the Words of Institution:

What is meant by "is?"

We are all agreed that "is" means "is;" that is, "equivalent to." The bread is equivalent in reality to Christ's body. It does not mean "significat." (See Sasse, This Is My Body, p117) Indeed it cannot mean "symbolizes" or "represents" as Luther so ably demonstrated at Marburg.

What is meant by "this" and "this cup?"

The ordinary use of an impersonal pronoun would refer back to the nearest antecedent. In this case it is that which Jesus "took," the bread. The same principle would apply to the "cup," although here we must realize that Jesus is using the common figure of speech called a synechdoche. He uses the container to indicate that which is contained. To keep the same image, it is as though someone asks "Where's my beer?" You reply, "You already drank the whole bottle." The glass bottle was not consumed, but the beer was.

The current discussion about the content of the Lord's Supper has usually centered on the word "is" in "This is my body." The Lutheran "is"--in Latin est--has thus become an established concept. Nowadays we hardly even encounter any debate concerning the "This", despite the fact that at this very point we find one of Luther's most important contributions to the right understanding of the Sacrament. In fact, it would be entirely appropriate to speak of the Lutheran "this." Medieval scholasticism also posed the question as to what "This" in Jesus' words, "This is my body", referred to. The answer given was that "this" referred to Christ's body. Behind this answer lies the requirement of school philosophy in those days that "is" must really mean "is" and that subject and predicate must really be identical. Jesus' words at the first celebration must thus mean: My body is my body. Luther goes against all exegesis of this philosophical type. Luther lets the text speak, and according to the text Jesus took visible bread in His hands and let the word "This" refer to that very bread: "[I] stick simply to His words and firmly believe that Christ's body is not only in the bread, but that the bread is the body of Christ."74 [WA 6,:511.19ff. (LW 36:34)]. In a decisive point, this surpasses scholastic theology. It is no longer a matter of tying a presence of Christ to the host in one way or another, or of expressing a presence of one thing in another. Instead, Luther says that the earthly bread in the hands of Jesus and in the hands of the celebrant is the body of Christ; and he cites a parallel that was shocking in his day: This man is God. Just as the man Jesus is God, the bread is the body of Christ.

Tom G. Hardt, The Sacrament of the Altar,IV. The Sacrament Means That Real Bread Is The Body Of Christ; http://members.aol.com/SemperRef/venerable.html

In the statements "This is My body" and "This is My covenant blood," "this" can only be take as a predicate noun, not as the subject. Sasse, We Confess, p. 72

"Body" and "blood," according to Lohmeyer, means "nothing else than the earthy life of this one Master, and My body" means "the person of the Master.". . . . To say it more precisely, the fellowship of the brothers that is effected in the eating and drinking is the presence of the Lord." (Das Evangelium des Markus) Sasse remarks almost offhandedly "For Lohmeyer, too, the bread is not actually the body nor the wine actually the blood of Christ." Sasse, We Confess, p 73

". . . the church has always taken "body" to be the actual body and "blood:" to be the actual blood of the Lord in such a way that this ecclesiastical understanding of the words of the Lord's Supper represents either a misunderstanding or a development the original Lord's Supper." Sasse, We Confess, p 73

What is meant by "my?

It is with this possessive pronoun that we must encounter the matter of Christology. Who is it that Jesus means when He points to Himself with this personal possessive pronoun? Lutherans must confess that He means who He has said He is in His teaching and preaching to the disciples and the people of His day.

For us it means the true God and true man who is united inseparably in the one person of the promised Christ of the Old Testament. He was and remains in the personal union of God and man. It is the divine and human body of the Christ, Messiah, Suffering Servant and Bread of life which we receive in the Supper. It is not someone else's body. It is not the churches body. It is the body of Christ alone. Is it perhaps significant that the phrase "the body of Christ" rather than "the body of Jesus" is used in Scripture to refer to the Sacrament? God wants us to think of the Messianic prophecies the One designated by "my" in the Words of Institution fulfilled.

It is also interesting to note that �@L is placed in two positions in the Greek texts. Matthew, Mark and Luke agree in placing the �@L after F@�". Paul places the �@L several words before F@�". I have reflected this in my translation. Is this significant? I suppose that a grammatical scholar would be able to postulate an answer, but I found no comment on it in my reading.

There is a good section on Luther's Christology over against Zwingli's in Sasse, This Is My Body, p. 118-124.

What is meant by "body?

Not "the church" as Zwingli claimed.

"According to the doctrine of the Real Presence, the body of Christ is at one and the same time present in its entirely in every single host on the altar as well as in every part of each host. And masses are celebrated at the same time in many different places. When Zwingli declares that this is impossible and that it is incompatible with the natural existence of the body of Christ, Luther takes it upon himself to prove that something similar does exist in another case. If he succeeds with that proof, Zwingli's objection must fall to the ground. (For Luther it is indeed true that the divine omnipotence cannot be limited, even if there is no parallel. If he could not find a parallel, this would not be any proof against the Real Presence and Zwingli would not win anyway.) Luther now points to the omnipresence of the body of Christ; hence at one and the same time Christ's body is present in different places. This condition contains the possibility of sacramental presence at masses celebrated simultaneously: if the one way is possible, so is the other.

This has led some people to draw a conclusion (entirely foreign to Luther) that the sacramental presence coincides with the omnipresence. The delight with which this identification has sometimes been accepted and taught, indubitably conceals the desire to flee from the reality of the sacramental presence. All of a sudden a way out seems to have been found, so that the denier of the Sacrament can proclaim--apparently on entirely legitimate grounds and within a convincing frame of orthodoxy--that the host on the altar is as much Christ's body as the egg on his breakfast table at home. Theologians devoted to the Real Presence have in like manner felt compelled to express regret about the fact that Luther stressed the omnipresence so much and that this threatened to empty the Real Presence of its reality. In actual fact Luther renders exact accounts, differentiating between different types of presence that ought not be confused." (Continuation of this quote is at the end of the paper)

Tom G. Hardt, The Sacrament of the Altar, III The Sacrament Does Not Coincide With The Omnipresence Of The Body Of Christ; http://members.aol.com/SemperRef/venerable.html

Hardt's position is, then, that we should be careful to distinguish between the various "modes of presence" as taught in the Formula of Concord (Tappert p. 586, 99ff). The "Sacramental Presence of Christ's body and blood in the bread and wine is distinct from His 'omnipresence.'

What is meant by the modifying phrase "which is given for you?"

This phrase is found only in Matthew and St. Paul, not in Mark and Luke referring to the bread that Jesus was giving to the apostles. There is not much disagreement among the Lutherans whom I consulted. Jesus clearly intends to cause the apostles to recall His sacrifice of suffering and death on the cross where His body would be broken and His blood poured out in atonement for their sins and the sins of the world.

What is meant by "blood?"

While Jesus does not say "Take, drink, this is my blood," it is difficult not to make the logical assumption based on the parallel with "Take, eat this is my body," that this is the meaning we may understandably come to. This is the blood of the Christ who was to pour out His blood as the last and most significant sacrifice of blood that was ever to be paid to God in atonement for sins. (Heb. 7:26-27, I John 2:2) Life is in the blood. Reinecker and Rogers (Linguistic Key to the Greek New Testament, p. 426) says: "Blood indicated a life given up in death which was the penalty for breaking the covenant." "Without the shedding of blood there is not forgiveness of sins." (Hebrews 9:22)

For Jewish men, this must have been an awesome command of Jesus. To drink blood was scandal to them who would not so much as touch it before the Passover. This introduces the next question we need to ask.

What is meant by the modifying phrase "of the new testament?"

Lenski says that "as the sacraments of the time before Christ themselves were only typical, it was necessary that they themselves be replaced by those of the New Testament, to point back to and be based on Christ." I think that there is more to it than simply referring to the time after Christ.

My thought is that it has to do somewhat with the sacrifice for the sins of the world that Christ was in the process of making. His life of righteousness and His pouring out of blood as required by the Old Testament seems to fit very well into the meaning of the Words of Institution, when one thinks about it. Concerning one of the foremost Old sacraments Sasse (We Confess, p. 64) says: "Where the Passover of the New Testament is celebrated, that of the Old Testament is both fulfilled and abolished." Jesus did not partake of the bread and wine He offered and gave the disciples, as the head of the household would have done in the Old way. Jesus now is God who is granting the favors and grace in this meal. He does not need it. Jesus is the New Testament Passover who in judgment will cast into hell the unbelieving who have not partaken of His flesh (John 6:51) and will receive into the freedom of eternal life those who value His blood on the doorpost, on the cross and on the Altar.

In the Words of Institution we have the promises of both the fulfillment of the sacrifices and the benevolence of the final sacrifice. Sasse says it well: "What happened there was something quite new, a special action that receives its meaning from the words that He spoke along with it." (We Confess, p. 65)

What is meant by the modifying phrase "poured out for many?"

Reinecker and Rogers (Linguistic Key to the Greek New Testament) notes (p. 77), that "shed blood indicates "life given up in death." They obviously agree that Christ is about to make a sacrifice of a broken body and shed blood to remove offenses to God from the record in heaven.

"For many" is used quite often (Mark 10:45, Romans 5:19) in the New Testament as an equivalent to "all." This then is a reference back to the blood and not merely to the contemporary pouring of the wine into the chalice for the liturgical celebration of the Sacrament. It certainly does not refer to a real, though unbloody, sacrifice being made on the modern day altar.

We are to remember that Christ shed his blood on the cross for our sins and the sins of our fellow communicants and the entire population of the earth from the beginning..

What is the significance of Jesus using the two elements of bread and wine?

What the Words of Institution tell us is that He gives us in the Supper in, with and under the bread and the wine is His body and blood, separated from His total person, body and soul. He can do this with the same will and power that He can be at the right hand of the Father and be present through the Word and Sacraments in our assemblies. The Reformed may deny that He can do it, but Lutheran don't. He can give us with the bread His body and, separate from His body, with the wine His blood that died on the cross because He is God and man --- and because that's what He says He does.

It is speculation to say that this was Jesus' specific intention when He instituted the Supper, but He had some reason for not giving the disciples a piece of lamb and saying, "Take, eat. This is Me who was sacrificed on the cross for your sins." The meat would have been much more in line with the Roman view that the body has the blood in it, so why give the wine. And it would have fit the symbolic view of the Reformed better, too. They could say this one piece of meat represents the whole, entire and complete person of Christ who is in heaven, and they would not have to deal with the two elements of separate body and separate blood.

Perhaps Jesus wanted to emphasis two significant points in our redemption: an incarnational one and a sacrificial one. For whatever reasons, we have a sacrament with bread and wine, Christ's body and blood, separate from each other.

"In a similar way, all attempts have failed to settle the old controversy by finding a new meaning for "body." It has been suggested that the Greek soma can mean 'person.' But apart from the fact that Jesus probably spoke of his sarx (basar, flesh) what would be the meaning of haima (blood)? Moreover the assumption that the Aramaic "flesh" and "blood' ought to be understood in Old Testament terms as meaning the whole man is untenable, because originally flesh and blood were not given simultaneously." Sasse, This Is My Body, pp 290-291

Sasse makes a similar point with regard to the fact that the bread was given some time previous to the giving of the cup "after the supper." Lenski thinks the bread was distributed to the apostles after the "bread of affliction" that was toward the beginning of the Passover liturgy. Then the cup was given after the meal was finished, probably the cup of thanksgiving. How much time separated the giving of the two elements, we don't know. But it was more than in a contemporary liturgy today.

Where should we conceive of Christ's body and blood coming from when we receive it?

From heaven?

Zwingli insisted that the body of Christ was in and remained in heaven. It was impossible for His body to be there and here at the same time. His assumption seems to have been that Christ must give His body and blood from the place and time the communicant is in at the moment. He seems to center on the person who is receiving, rather than on Him who is giving His body and blood.

Here is where the Christology of Luther really shines. The all-knowing, all-powerful God/man is the One who put into effect the Sacrament. And He can do whatever He wants to do. He is not bound to time and place the way the communicant is. Christ spans time and eternity, universe and atom.

Rev. Terrill Huber said (12/10/97), "There is still only one flesh and blood, and that is that in which our God resides beside His Father, fills the universe, and comes to us in bread and wine." His notion seems to be that Christ's body and blood come to us in the bread and wine from "beside the Father." He offers no Scripture to support this claim. This also seems to limit Christ from our point of view. We seem to be captured by the Zwinglian cosmology.

What does a claim like the following mean? "It is not some lifeless part of Christ He places on our tongues." Is it some living part of Christ or the whole living Christ that He places on our tongue? Where is there any indication that the body of the living, resurrected and glorified Christ is given to us in the Sacrament? We are not pointed to heaven for our remembrance of Christ in the Sacrament.

From the empty tomb?

Sasse says,"And finally concerning the connection between the Lord's Supper and the resurrection, which Luther loved to emphasize, he never went beyond what the Biblical teaching is. He knows the fact of the connection but not the how. . . . He too speaks as Scripture speaks and is silent when Scripture is silent." Sasse, We Confess, p. 109

I have noticed this occasionally with Luther. However, I have never seen any Scriptural citations supporting a connection between the Supper and the resurrection. My suspicion is that this is sermonizing or devotional material where all of us might wax poetic. Sasse does not say anything more about this, nor give citations. Maybe there are none, which is my claim; though I am certainly open to correction.

We have cited these testimonies, not to undertake a discussion here concerning this subject, for His Imperial Majesty does not disapprove of this article, but in order that all who may read them may the more clearly perceive that we defend the doctrine received in the entire Church, that in the Lord�s Supper the body and blood of Christ are truly and substantially present, and are truly tendered with those things which are seen, bread and wine. And we speak of the presence of the living Christ [living body]; for we know that death hath no more dominion over Him, Rom. 6, 9. (Et loquimur de praesentia vivi Christi; scimus enim, quod mors ei ultra non dominabitur, Rom. 6, 9) .Bente, F., Concordia Triglotta, (Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Northwestern Publishing House) 1997.

This is the only confessional citation that I have found that seemingly indicates that the body we receive in the Sacrament is the "living Christ," and that is in a note by Bente in the parentheses. the Latin simply says "vivi Christi" and not "living body." In looking at Romans 6:9 we see that the Apostle is speaking of the sanctified life we are born again to in Baptism. There is no reference to the Lord's Supper. Is this one of those places where I can disagree with the details of exegesis in the Confessions? Or may we interpret this passage to mean that the living Christ is present as host in the action of the Supper with His body and blood, as is so frequently said in the Confessions? Even so, I cannot see how the passage really fits under the topic De Sacra Coena. (See my paper on Article X on the Concordtx.org webpage)

From the cross?

It has been my contention for a goodly number of years that we should be guided by the Words of Institution primarily when we think about such questions. Certainly these words, spoken in view of the cross that He was about to endure, erect the foundation of our thoughts and remembrances as we approach the Lord's Table. Luke and Paul include Jesus's words "given for you" or "for you." How can we think of anything else but His suffering and dying on the cross when we hear those words? That body and blood from the cross are given to me to deliver to me what they earned by being broken and poured out, namely the forgiveness of sins.

"It (the Supper) is not only a celebration of remembrance like the Passover, in which the human spirit recalled the past for itself, but it is a genuine, actual bringing into the present of God's redeeming act through the gift of the body and blood of Christ." Sasse, We Confess, p 91

". . . 1 Cor. 10:18ff says nothing more than that the Lord's Supper is a sacrificial meal in which we receive what Christ once sacrificed for us on the cross." Sasse, We Confess, p. 125

What indications do the Words of Institution or any other Dominical or apostolic words concerning the Supper indicated that there is more present than the Words of Institution say?

That there are changes taking place in the Lutheran world with regard to the Sacrament is evident. Change is taking place in all churches; the only difference is in the rate of change. I have documented some of these changes in American Lutheranism in my paper to the Texas Confessional Lutherans on the Real Presence a few years back. Sasse gives a much better brief overall historical survey of when the changes began to be evident in the appendix of This Is My Body. One of the latest he documents is the Arnoldschain Theses that served to unite all the Protestant churches (EkiD) in Germany in 1948. Their compromise on the Lord's Supper was this: "He, the crucified and risen Lord, permits Himself to be taken in His body and blood given and shed for all, through His word of promise, with the bread and wine, and grants us participation, by virtue of the Holy Spirit, in the victory of His lordship, so that we, believing in His promise, may receive the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation." (Thesis 4)

So what do the members of the EkiD think they receive when they go to the Supper? A compromise between the Lutheran view "the body and the blood" and the modern, ecumenical view "He Himself, His person" "The Arnoldshain These belong together with many modern statements on the Lord's Supper which try to substitute the presence of the person for the presence of body and blood." The 1957 Oberlin, OH meeting of an American Faith and Order Conference on the Table of the Lord adopted a similar statement. ". . . the whole Christ is personally present as both subject and object, i.e. as the One who is at the same time the Giver and the Gift." Sasse suspects that the reason for such compromise is ultimately that they do not respect the Word, particularly the simple Words of Institution. He cites the book Marburg Revisited by Augsburg that had liberal Lutherans and Reformed contributors trying to smooth over past differences. Their conclusion? "The significance of Christology in the Lord's Supper is that it provides assurance that it is the total Christ, the divine-human person who is present in the Sacrament, but does not explain how he is present." Sasse, This Is My Body, pp 337ff This is not the Lutheran doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ's body and blood in the bread and wine, received by believers and unbelievers alike.

Several Lutherans see no problem with using the terminology and concepts of the modern, ecumenical theological left while holding to the orthodox position. After reading Sasse, I am even more concerned. I was surprised that this matter was so frequently referenced in "We Confess." I was even more distressed when I remembered that many of my email list friends have quoted Sasse to defend their doctrine of the whole Christ being present in the elements.

We don't have to read all these citations, but they are only some of what could have been given that demonstrate Sasse's awareness of the problem.

Also untenable is Otto's (Rudolf Otto in Reich Gottes und Menschensohn, 1940, 214ff) further assumption that the words "This is My body," in Aramaic den hu gufi, should mean nothing more than "This is I Myself." Sasse, We Confess, p60,

And so the understanding of "body" in the sense of "person" enjoys great popularity in our day. . . Dalman comes to the conclusion: "It would be possible to take guphi in the sense of 'I Myself.' However, the fact that the Early Christians did not take it in this sense, as well as our Lord's reference to His Blood at the administration of the wine, necessitates the translation 'My Body' (G. Dalman, Jesus-Jeschua {1922}, 131 {Jesus - Jeshua, 143}). In fact this understanding of "My Body" would not only make sense if one either could find a similar transferred meaning for blood, of which there is none, or if one with R. Otto (Reich Gottes und Menschensohn, 2d ed., 214ff. [The Kingdom of God and the Son of Man, 320f.] , and his followers (e.g., E Kaesemann, Abendsmahlgemeinschaft? 67f.) denies that Jesus spoke the words about the cup at all, which we have seen is impossible in another connection (see on p. 59). If "My blood of the covenant poured out for many" unquestionably means the actual blood of Jesus that was poured out on the cross, then "My body" can only mean the actual body that was given into death. Sasse, We Confess, p71,

In discussing the understanding of the Words of Institution in Paul and John, Sasse deals with John 6. He says that in the first part of the discourse on the Bread from Heaven, the Bread from Heaven is "Jesus Himself." "This part of the discourse has been properly taken as the scriptural foundation of the doctrine of the manducatio spiritualis, the spiritual eating of Christ in faith." At verse 51b, he claims a change takes place. "Here the heavenly bread is no longer the person of Christ, but His flesh." Sasse, We Confess, p78 Without necessarily agreeing that John 6 is sacramental, it is clear that Sasse recognizes that the person of Christ can be received by faith, but the "flesh" or "body" of Christ comes to us in the bread of the Supper, not the person.

One cannot say that "flesh and blood" or "body and blood" together mean "person," for in the institution body and blood did not even appear in the same sentence. They appear in two sentences that were spoken at the beginning and at the end ("after supper") of the meal, separated by at least an hour. Sasse, We Confess, 107

The Swedish theologian, Tom Hardt who wrote frequently for Christian News and who died recently had a whole chapter in his book demonstrating that

VI. The Sacrament Is The Body And Blood Of Christ--Not The Whole Christ

Perhaps this particular point may be considered especially unspiritual and unworthy, so that the analysis of the compass of the Real Presence appears like a playground for theologians with sticky fingers who push their way into areas that ought to be too holy for speculative thought. This suspicion is not necessarily unfounded, and this very fact makes it necessary to point out very exactly the limitations that are set for our thoughts and words.

As late as the eleventh century it was said within Latin Christendom, in connection with Christ's own words, that the content of the sacramental gift was the body and blood of Christ, while the reception of the whole Christ was to be the result of the communicants being incited by the Sacrament to strive after the spiritual life which is Christ in His divinity and His humanity. This reflects the old conviction that the Sacrament is best defined by Christ Himself who said only: This is my body, This is my blood. The partaking of the whole Christ is one of the promises which is also apart from the Sacrament and is directed to faith: We shall come unto him and make our abode with him (John 14:23).

Nowadays the wording "the whole Christ" usually occurs in a frame entirely different from that of medieval scholasticism. The formula "the whole Christ" has a great attraction for modern theology, which would like to dispense with the Real Presence. "The whole Christ" is the presence of grace in the Word, given to faith, and the presence which is true of every service: "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." Since the words of institution are a part of the preaching of the Word and are not only consecrating, and since the distribution is often accompanied by so-called words of distribution, it is always possible to let the Words conveyance of the general presence treacherously replace the sacramental presence constituted by the fact that the bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ. Already in Melanchthon's interpretation of the words of institution, Bible words about the general presence started getting mixed in, and the whole Christ was formulated as a rejection of the Lutheran wording, the body and blood of Christ. This tradition, which lays claim to the exclusive title of satisfying the needs of piety for a personal meeting with God, was handed down by Melanchthon's followers, the old and new Philippists within the Pietistic, Liberal tradition. For this reason it is not unimportant to decline all turgid, pious talk about Christ and to bring all discussions about the Sacrament back to Jesus words, "This is my body."

Tom G. Hardt, The Sacrament of the Altar,VI. The Sacrament Is The Body And Blood Of Christ--Not The Whole Christ ; http://members.aol.com/SemperRef/venerable.html

I have also cited a number of other theologians who make the same point. I have quoted them before in my paper on the Real Presence which you can get off Bethlehem Lutheran Church, North Zulch Texas� webpage.

Lowell C. Green in his article Ecumenical Concerns and Communion Fellowship in Luther's Day and Ours, in Evangelical directions for the Lutheran Church, Page 95. Describing the Ecumenical pressure put on the Lutherans by the Protestants:

"The accusation that Luther and his followers were too realistic in their doctrine was accompanied by charges of materialism, a physical understanding of the sacrament, the enclosing of God in bread, or even cannibalism - a charge leveled also against the theologians of the ancient church! How can one avoid such accusations? It's easy! Speak no longer about the presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, but speak simply of the presence of the "whole person" of Christ. As a matter of fact, certain Lutherans in America have decided to follow just that course. But it is a deceptive course."

Norman Nagel, "Closed Communion: In the Way of the Gospel; In the Way of the Law" Concordia Journal, January 1991:

"From the Words of Institution the Lutheran Book of Worship excises a reference to drinking (1 Cor. 11:25). Some have inserted the word "sacrament" into the Small Catechism's first answer. This answer is some times difficult to find in some Lutheran documents which speak of Christ giving Himself rather than repeating what he said: His Body and Blood for us to eat and to drink. A weakening in this confession naturally brings with it a weakening in the care exercised in closed communion, as Luther saw so clearly."

A Summary of Christian Doctrine, by Edward W. A. Koehler, Page 2l7

"The heavenly elements present, distributed, and received in the Sacrament are the true Body and true Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have no right to add to, or to detract from, this. The "person of Christ" is indeed present at the Lord's Supper, as it is present everywhere; but it is not "Christ's whole and entire," His Body and soul, His humanity and divinity, that constitute the heavenly element, as Rome declares, but only the Body and Blood of Christ."

John Stephenson, "Admission to the Lutheran Altar; Reflections on Open vs Closed Communion" Concordia Theological Quarterly, January - April 1989 Page 43.. Under the topic "The Essence of the Blessed Sacrament" Professor Stephenson says:

"The Lutheran Holy Communion and the Reformed Communion are not one and the same, and so the Lutheran - Reformed Inter-Communion is eo ipso a charade. Union is impossible without unity, and there can be no unity where communicants commune in different realities. . . At this point we must insist that what is really present in the Lord's Supper is not simply Christ as a person, but quite specifically His actual Body and His actual Blood. Much mischief has been wrought by Lutherans keen to water down the real presence into a shadow of itself. "What is given in the Holy Supper? The really present exalted Christ, acting through His earthly minister, consecrates and distributes His actual Body and Blood to communicants believing and unbelieving alike."

Conclusion

The Reformer regarded the Words of Institution as "simple, plain, clear, firm, and indubitable." It was a joy to reflect on them for a bit and to share my thoughts and the thoughts of others, particularly Herman Sasse's, since he has such a reputation as a solid, confessional and conservative theologian throughout all Lutheranism. I hope that this paper will encourage you to study anew the Word's about the Sacrament with a critical eye toward the modern ecumenical theory of Christ's Presence over against the Real Presence of Christ's true body and blood in the bread and wine.

Continuation of Hardt's quote on "What is meant by "body?"

Medieval scholasticism, which reached its climax in the thirteenth century, took this later reality into the theology of the Sacrament itself. Through concomitance (in Latin, per concomitantiam) Christ's divinity is also in the elements according to Thomas Aquinas, for His divinity and humanity can never be separated. This proposition appears to be biblical and reasonable. Nevertheless, within the Ockhamist school we find the beginnings of a denial of this proposition. The background of this protest seems to be that it was feared that such wording could be construed to mean that, just as Christ's body takes a real place in the consecrated host, the omnipresent Godhead would be thought of as inscribed in space. In Luther, who evidently follows up the Ockhamistic argumentation here, this is worded very graphically: "Let the hairsplitters and the faithless sophists search for such unsearchable things and conjure the divinity into the sacrament."118 Hence nothing may be allowed to suggest the idea that the immovable, omnipresent God is concentrated to a point of creation by virtue of the consecration. The body of Christ can indeed have both of these relationships, omnipresence and a particular presence in Palestine, presence in heaven and presence in the Sacrament. However, the Godhead remains in eternity the one with whom is not variableness, neither shadow of turning (James 1:17). This is not only the insight of philosophers but also that of the Reformers and of all classical Christian theology. That God became man, that He came down from heaven, etc., has of course never meant a change of such a kind that the divinity was contracted to the point where Jesus body was. What happened in the womb of Mary at the moment of the annunciation is rather that the human soul and body of Jesus were lifted up into the person of the Eternal Word and possessed in it God's relation to creation. The divine nature is not changed; the new thing that happens happens to the human nature. The concentration which occurs is that it can be said of this human being alone that He is God. All of the great Christian theologians have been in agreement about the fact that also prior to the incarnation, the Godhead was present in the Virgin's womb as He is present everywhere in all space; the Godhead did not have to go to Mary. "The body...born of Mary" ("Gott sei gelobet," The Lutheran Hymnal, 313) went instead into the Godhead.

This orthodox understanding of the meaning of the incarnation makes it possible in principle to give the word concomitance a meaning that is acceptable. Then concomitance would only mean that the miracle of the incarnation is indissoluble and inerasable, that the body and blood of Christ in the Sacrament rests in the Second Person of the Holy Trinity as also in Palestine and in heaven. The divinity of Christ in its invariable omnipresence, of course, draws nigh in the Sacrament in the same way as it could walk into a Jewish home through the door of the house at the beginning of our calendar by virtue of the personal union. This personal union means that just as Christ was crucified when the body of Christ was nailed to the cross, it is in like manner correct to teach that Christ rests upon the altar on which His body lies, yea, that the Godhead is grasped by the hands of the celebrant when the body of God is consecrated and distributed. Nevertheless, it is not a question of a divinity which has been conjured into the Sacrament.

Most basically the problem with concomitance is that the formulation and dogmatization of this teaching in the medieval church gave it the character of saying more than the fundamental Christological dogma of the inseparable union of the two natures. In order to render meaningful the doctrine accepted by the church, human thought seemed to be directed to operate with categories which threatened the exaltedness of the Godhead. Concomitance does not become reasonable and acceptable until the insight is gained that this teaching is unnecessary and meaningless. It is a well-known fact that this teaching was in time used as a defense for the custom of distributing only the body of Christ to the communicants at mass. The argumentation used by the Roman Church in order to preserve this usage 119 does not in principle depart from the concomitance of the Godhead: here it is only a question of the presence of the blood of Christ in the body of Christ, so that the latter is thought to give the gifts of both species in one of them. For Luther the essential thing here is that he rejects the notion that the clear order of Scripture may be abrogated, even if this argumentation were correct: Even if it were true that as much is included under one form as under both, yet administration in one form is not the whole order and institution as it was established and commanded by Christ.120 Luther's way of arguing here is directed against the idea that religious needs are a norm for how the Church should read Scripture. Even if the communicant were to receive the gifts of both species in one, it is still clear that he would not have receive the whole institution of Christ. This is the decisive issue. The argument of the concomitance of the Godhead has here, too, a certain parallel validity. For Lutherans, too, it is clear that the body and blood are no longer separated as they were in death--just as little as divinity and humanity were ever separated in Christ. The resurrected Christ took his life back again. In order to counter the accusation of a dead, bloodless body of Christ in the mass, the Lutheran Confessions write: "We are talking about the presence of the living Christ, knowing that death no longer has dominion over him(Romans 6:9)."121 This does not, however, prevent the special sacramental presence (with its special sacramental form of existence) from being extended only to hold true of what Christ says the bread and the wine are respectively. This does not mean that the Lamb is slaughtered again before the face of the Father in such a way that body and blood are separated. The exalted Lamb freely exercises His freedom to let His body alone be present under the bread and His blood alone be present under the wine. Their union in the resurrected life in the face of the Father does not form an obstacle to different elements being consecrated to convey them to the Church here on earth. Luther says about this: "Who has commanded us to put more into the Sacrament than what is given by the clear and plain words of Christ? Who has made you certain that this conclusion [the concomitance] is true? How do you know what God can do?"122

118 WA 11:450.13ff. (LW 36:297)

119 The fact that laypeople today can, in certain circumstances, receive the chalice in the Roman mass changes nothing in the controversy which has existed between Lutheranism and Roman Catholicism for centuries. The controversy has always been about the question of whether the chalice has to be distributed at mass, not if it may be distributed. Even during the sixteenth century the distribution of the chalice was admitted in some places within the Church of Rome. It is typical of a superficial way of looking at things to conclude from a liturgical similarity, which has appeared now, that the doctrinal controversy has been settled.

120 WA 50:242.17ff. Tappert, 311f (SA III/VI.3).

121 Tappert, 180 (Ap X.4).

122 WA 26:606ff.

Tom G. Hardt, The Sacrament of the Altar,VI. The Sacrament Is The Body And Blood Of Christ--Not The Whole Christ ; http://members.aol.com/SemperRef/venerable.html Used with permission.