# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1856_S176
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

176 "In, With, and Under."

...Calvin, assume a presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Holy Supper in which this body and this blood, as to their substance, are and remain not on earth, where the Holy Supper is held, but in heaven alone — that is, are absent! What, then, is that assurance, that the German Reformed "believed then, and still believe today, in the reality and truthfulness of the presence of those heavenly gifts in the sacramental act"? It is nothing but a gross deception. To deny that the body of Christ is not only in heaven but also on earth, and yet to assert that one believes in a real and true presence and enjoyment of it — that is so palpable a contradiction that one is tempted to doubt whether there is a single rational person in the world who seriously believes that this can be reconciled. We are well aware that the Reformed gentlemen hide behind the idea that something can indeed be present to faith which is far from unbelief; but we readily grant that there are indeed many kinds of presence — not only the presence of a thing that arises from one's laying hold of it in faith, but also one that comes about through remembrance, or through vivid representation in the mind, in our thoughts; a presence that one merely imagines; a presence as to power and effect; a presence through an image, through a work left behind, and so on. But all this is simply not an essential, actual, and true presence. Such a presence is nothing other than the nearness of one being to another with regard to the place (ubi) in which both are found; nothing other than the relation by virtue of which one being, through its own substance, without moral intermediate causes, indeed without instruments, acts, or can act, upon another. Every other presence is simply not an essential, true, and actual one, but a presence in an improper sense. Therefore, when the Reformed, despite confining the body of Christ to heaven, speak of an essential, actual, and true presence of it, this is nothing but a cheap play with words, originally devised for the purpose of taking from the Lutheran people their faith in the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Holy Supper, and giving them, in its place, pious-sounding phrases — but which, it now seems, are, in many cases, repeated in good faith by those who are accustomed to being satisfied with concrete concepts.

But the more liberal our opponents are with all manner of fine words, by which they seek to disguise their doctrine — that in, with, and under the blessed bread and wine nothing is given but bread and wine, and that only their faith comes to the aid of Christ's poor words, "This is my body," etc.*) — in order that

*) We do not deny, incidentally, that God, who can make good out of evil (Gen.
50:20), has used, and still uses, the orthodox-sounding speech of Calvinist preachers to bring it about that the people, who take the words at face value, believe in a biblical manner concerning the Holy Supper. It has often happened to us ourselves that, out of Calvinist