# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1856_S132
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

132 The Obligation to the Ecclesiastical Confessions, etc.

eating and drinking in the Holy Supper refers merely to bread and wine,
not to the body and blood of Christ, which latter, even in the
sacrament, are not eaten and drunk with the mouth in a sacramental
manner, but only with faith. This objection, however, could of course
not be grounded on the statements of Holy Scripture concerning the Holy
Supper, since in them the eating and drinking is referred to the whole
of what the Lord Christ offers in the sacrament; instead, it was held
that the circumstance that the Lord Christ, at the first distribution of
the Holy Supper, sat bodily before the disciples — and, more generally,
the doctrine of the person of Christ — obliged us to take the eating and
drinking in the sacrament, with respect to the body and blood of Christ,
as the figurative expression for the reception, occurring through faith,
of these gifts of grace: that the Lord Christ, exalted to the right hand
of God just as he was on earth, is not merely true God but also true
man, and is therefore, with respect to his body and blood, spatially
confined in heaven, so that he can be present, with that body and blood,
not to the mouth of the communicants, but only to their faith as it
reaches up to heaven. This, however, was a ground for the objection that
rested on Holy Scripture as little as the objection itself did. First,
Holy Scripture assures us that the Lord Jesus Christ can be present
wherever he wills; for the fact that he sits at the right hand of God —
or, what is the same thing, that he has all power in heaven and on earth
— gives him also the power of this presence, which, moreover, he
ascribes to himself in Matthew 28:20 and 18:20. Where he wills to be
present, he has said in his Word; hence we confidently expect his
presence in the Supper by virtue of the word of his almighty power which
he spoke at its institution. Second, Holy Scripture teaches us that when
the Lord Christ promises his presence, we may by no means exclude his
human nature from it. If he is true God and true man in one person, then
his human nature too is present wherever his person, according to his
promise, is present — unless one wished, for certain cases, to undo
again the personal union of the divine and human natures in him. It is
an undeniable fact that Holy Scripture repeatedly says of the person of
Christ what would belong to only one of the two natures united in him,
if that nature could be considered by itself. Thus it says in Luke
24:26 that Christ had to suffer the death of the cross, although the
name "Christ" designates the person of the Lord, whereas the capacity to
suffer and die does not, by itself, belong to the divine nature, but
only to the human (compare 1 Peter 3:18; 4:1). Works that belong to the
person of Christ — among others, the cleansing of men from their sins —
are ascribed to a name, or some other designation, of the Lord Jesus
that he bears from one of the two natures — for example, to "Son of God"
(Heb. 1:2ff.), to "man" (1 Tim. 2:5ff.); and finally there are
especially many statements in which