# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1845 09 29_S11
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

God — mysteries which, though they proceed from the invisible bosom of the Godhead and withdraw from the inquiring human spirit behind the veil of eternity, and can be believed only on testimony for the sake of one's own salvation, are nevertheless never presented to us in Scripture as contradicting undeniable truths,*) and thus nourish and quicken the hope that our gaze, one day in the unseen world, will no longer look into the mirror of an enigmatic word, but will know face to face.

The Christian reader will not be angry with me for not speaking simply enough here. But how else is one to do it, in order to show rationalism, precisely at the point on which it prides itself so greatly, that it is entirely and utterly lacking in the very thing it claims, namely true, rational scholarship?

(To be continued.)

*) The conceivability of the Three-in-One shows itself even in the analogy of light, under whose image God transfigures Himself to earthly weakness; and great teachers of the Church call attention to the distinction between the invisible element and the actual ray of flame and the warmth it communicates. Should the condescension of the great God into human lowliness be thought absurd, merely because our weak reason cannot grasp it? What is more unreasonable than wishing to measure the ocean by its drops, the sand of the sea by its grains, the infinite fullness of omnipotence by finite concepts? Does not fire glow through iron? How much more does the divine nature of the eternal Word glow through humanity, and "fill it wholly with divine light and life."

"Seek not, with proud presumption, the ground of all things together
That prophets and apostles, kindled by heaven's own impulse,
Full of truth, full of God, speak forth in the holy books;
Seek not either, with reckless daring, to break into those matters
Which a holy silence covers; but pass by such places only
With timid awe, and with reverent steps —
That is wise unwisdom, when we refuse to understand
What the best of Teachers wills that we should not know."
(Composed in Latin by Jos. Scaliger, translated into German by Gottsched, in Leibniz's Discourse on the Agreement of Faith, etc., § 56.)

On the Distribution Formula: "Christ says: This is my body," etc.
At the same time, a continuation of the "Answer to the Most Recent Defense of the Union."

As the readers of the first volume of our Lutheraner know, a small pamphlet appeared against it, whose first part we have already examined. Proceeding further, we now find that Mr. Nollau, the author of the pamphlet, complains about what we had said, disapprovingly, in our paper concerning the distribution formula customary in the Evangelical Church for the administration of the Holy Supper. Mr. N. accuses us here of "hairsplitting"; but unfortunately for no reason other than that the good man has once again failed to understand us. For we did not declare the distribution formula "Christ says: This is my body," etc., to be unbiblical in itself. We asserted only this: since many Evangelicals declare the Lutheran distribution formula, "This is the true body," etc., to be unbiblical and a human addition, they thereby condemn themselves. For if only that were biblical which stands in the Bible in the very same letters and in the very same form of sentence, and if, on the other hand, that were unbiblical which is rendered in other words but nonetheless expresses the true, proper sense of Scripture — then not only the Lutheran formula, "This is the true body," etc., but far more the Evangelical formula, "Christ says: This is," etc., would be unbiblical; for not only the word "true," but also the words "Christ says," do not stand in such a combination and in these very letters in Scripture. The blame for "hairsplitting" therefore falls not on the editor of the Lutheraner, but on the Evangelicals. We wished only to pay the latter back in the coin they themselves had issued, and to strike them with their own weapons — and we have in fact done so, as Mr. N., through his own reply, has unwittingly confessed, by leading them, through their own assertions, ad absurdum, that is, by convicting them of absurdity.

We too, indeed, hold the words of distribution as they are used in the Evangelical Lutheran Church to be the most fitting, especially in this age, when so many who even call themselves Lutheran deny the essential presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Holy Supper; we further hold our formula to have been splendidly chosen for awakening and strengthening the faith of the communicant upon receiving the blessed elements — yet we are far from declaring precisely this manner of ours to be the only correct one. Even within the orthodox Church, great variety has always existed in this free matter. According to the so-called Apostolic Constitutions, in the earliest times distribution was made with the simple words: "The body of Christ — the blood of Christ, the cup of life." Not until the sixth century was this formula expanded to: "The body, the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, preserve you (your soul) unto eternal life." Luther still wished to retain this latter formula as late as 1523, as we see from his work Formula Missae, which Luther confirmed again in 1526 in another writing, the Deutsche Messe (German Mass), etc. In the Agenda that Duke Heinrich of Saxony had drawn up for his small territory in 1536, the words read: "The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, given for you unto death, strengthen and preserve you in faith unto eternal life. Amen. The blood of our dear Lord Jesus Christ, shed for your sin, strengthen and" etc. The words "Take and eat — take and drink" we find first added in Veit Dietrich's Nuremberg Agenda of the year 1543. Only at the end of the sixteenth century, however — that is, long after Luther's death — did most Lutheran congregations distribute with the words: "The true body — the true blood." This came about because, at that time, Crypto- (secret) Calvinists had been discovered in the very midst of the Lutheran Church.

Now since, accordingly, even in the orthodox Church the very same formula has not always been retained, but rather Christian liberty has been exercised there too in this matter, we cannot, of course, reject as absolutely contrary to God's Word the practice, in the Evangelical Church, of distributing with the words "Christ says: This is," etc. But it is another question whether this formula is a fitting one, and whether, on account of the circumstances under which it was introduced, it is not a highly suspect formula which an orthodox Christian can no longer use today without playing the hypocrite alongside the false believers and weakening his confession of faith. This question we have answered in the affirmative, and must still affirm it today.

It is plainly most unfitting when the preacher, in administering the Holy Supper — where not a mere recollection of its first celebration, but a repetition of that same celebration, is to take place — narrates, at the distribution of the blessed elements, what Christ once said, instead of now speaking, as a steward of the mystery (1 Cor. 4:1), the words of presentation and appropriation. What Dr. Rudelbach observes in his work The Words of the Sacrament is beyond dispute: "Just as little as one may be permitted to turn Baptism into a recitation of, or a report about, the act of baptizing, with the words, 'Our Lord Jesus Christ says: Go into all the world,' etc., just as little is one entitled to enervate the full content of the distribution words in the Supper through a similar circumlocution."

If we further consider on what occasion the formula "Christ says," etc., was chosen, it must appear highly suspect even to a Lutheran who is not otherwise inclined to suspicion. This interpolation first appears, namely, in a few Reformed and rationalist church books, and was then, on Dr. Marheineke's proposal, taken up into the new Prussian Agenda, for the purpose of being usable by Reformed and Lutherans alike, and thus of furthering an ecclesiastical union while doctrinal differences persisted. How, then, can an honest Lutheran adopt with a good conscience a formula that was chosen for the very purpose that each person might believe by it whatever he personally holds to be right! Nowhere should a Christian confess his faith with words that have been deliberately chosen so as to admit a double meaning; and double-tonguedness at the altar of the Lord must appear as nothing less than an abominable outrage. Had the formula in question been introduced by a church that otherwise decidedly confessed the true presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Sacrament, we would reject it merely as unfitting; but since it has been favored and chosen as a shibboleth by a church seeking thereby to achieve its