# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1855_S365
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Exposition of 1 Corinthians etc. 365

be present with his body, and not — where he promises such a presence in his word — to enclose the body of Christ within a bounded space, as our earthly bodies are enclosed. Paul, on the other hand, speaks in such a way that we are not to consider the body of Christ according to the laws we perceive in earthly bodies. Already with regard to the bread of the Supper we are to bear in mind that all who partake of the Supper receive one and the same bread, namely the bread of the Supper; in that he thus removes from the thought of the fellowship of the Supper everything that could remind one of a dividing-up of the bread among the individual partakers, and hence of the partaking of individual portions of the bread, while on the other hand bringing forward everything that unites the guests at the table of the Lord into one body, whose members hold in common with one another, undivided and unapportioned, the whole enjoyment and possession of the entire body — in that he then explains that it is for this reason that he can assert of the bread that it is communion, and not merely a means for conveying the body of Christ, he draws our attention to the fact that we must not think of a dividing-up of the body and blood of Christ in the Supper. The individual guest at the Supper partakes of the body and blood of Christ whole and undivided; the communicants as a fellowship likewise; and this fellowship possesses these same gifts of grace in such a way that it, as a whole, and each of its members, has the body and blood of Christ. If we further consider that, according to Paul's words, the body and blood of Christ remain equally present with the individual partakers and with their fellowship, we must recognize that Paul does not wish the body and blood of Christ in the Supper to be considered according to the laws under which earthly bodies exist, or earthly food is consumed and used up; rather, he contradicts all doctrines that picture the body and blood of Christ at the Supper as, say, enclosed within the space of heaven, or in the bread and wine, or present alongside bread and wine as heat is present alongside light, or that would have us believe that bread and wine are changed into them. Paul unconditionally confirms the doctrine of our Church, which declares the presence and partaking of the body and blood of Christ in the Supper to be real, yet sacramental — that is, occurring in this manner only in the sacrament — and which rejects every closer determination of it drawn from nature or the laws of reason.

Likewise the doctrine which lets the presence and partaking of the body and blood of Christ in the Holy Supper occur through faith, and thus makes it dependent on the faith of the recipient, cannot stand before Paul's words. If this doctrine holds either that bread and wine are given out as signs, in the partaking of which one is to call to mind the body and blood of Christ, or that it regards the partaking of the body and blood of Christ as nothing more than a believing acceptance of the fruits of Christ's atoning death, then it contradicts Paul, who holds the body and blood of Christ to be the common possession of the communicants. Others, however, assert a partaking of the body and blood of Christ itself through faith — namely in such a way that faith receives a power, or the powers, of the body and blood of Christ, whereby then