# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1855_S376
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

376 The Lutheran Formula of Distribution, etc.

Lord truly eat his body and truly drink his blood, and that this happens
for the forgiveness of their sins and for the strengthening of their faith;
whereas we must declare all those formulas to be inadmissible, or at
least unfitting, in which such a faith is not expressed — indeed in which
the confession of this faith is even deliberately evaded, and, in order to
be freed from it, the formula of giving is transformed into a merely
narrative one.

Accordingly, among all the formulas cited, we can only disapprove of
that one, now most favored among the Unionists: "Our Lord Jesus says:
Take" etc. Let us here let a Rudelbach speak on this. He writes, namely,
in his work "Die Sacramentworte," Leipzig, at Tauchnitz, 1837, the
following on the subject:

"Estranged from ancient church practice, and in contradiction with
the truth of Scripture, is every formula of distribution which makes the
confession of the true body and the true blood of Jesus Christ merely
implicit, or in any way gives occasion for doubt about it — this applies
in particular also to that formula which, on Marheineke's proposal, was
taken up into the new Prussian Agenda: '''Our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ says: This is my body''' etc. This formula is already found in
some Reformed church books, then in the Ulm church orders of the
years 1656 and 1747, further in the Palatinate order of worship of 1783,
finally both in the Schleswig-Holstein Agenda of 1797 and in the
Württemberg liturgy of 1809. These latter, already muddied sources
alone should sufficiently draw attention to the liturgical character and
the tendency of the introduction of this formula. Through this
interpolation, 'Our Lord Jesus Christ says' (or 'said'), the Calvinist
error — according to which the Consecration is to be understood merely
as a historical narrative or an edifying address — is reproduced in the
Distribution; the one corresponds exactly to the other, just as surely as
the faith in the real presence of the body and blood of Jesus Christ in
the Supper is powerfully expressed in the words: '''Take, and eat, this is
the body''' etc. For the question here is by no means whether a believing
Christian might not be able to be satisfied with this formula, whether he
might not enjoy the body and blood of the Lord to his blessing even so,
whether he might not be able and permitted to disregard the veiled
intention — for all this may unhesitatingly be granted, provided only that
one does not, on the other hand, wish to wound the conscience of those
who cannot be satisfied with it — but rather the question is quite simply
this: has the Church thereby expressed its confession, its holy fidelity of
conviction concerning the true, essential presence of Jesus in the Supper,
clearly and adequately? And this we must most definitely and decidedly
deny. We do not wish, as some have done, to interpret the meaning of
this formula to mean that Jesus Christ indeed said this, but that it is not
in fact so; on the contrary, we too regard such an interpre-