# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1847 07 07_S131
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

As for the further matter of the omission of the breaking of bread, which has not infrequently been held against the Lutheran church as well, this point of accusation is already of greater importance than the one mentioned before.

It is indeed true that the holy evangelists expressly report to us that Christ, before distributing the blessed bread, first broke it. From this the Reformed accordingly draw the conclusion that it must evidently be altogether necessary, for a proper Supper, that the bread be broken in it.

In order to decide this, the question must first be discussed as to what actually belongs to the essence of the Lord's Supper. For it is clear that the holy evangelists also expressly mention a number of circumstances that occurred at the founding celebration of the Lord's Supper which yet no one regards as essential to a proper celebration of it. They tell us, for example, expressly, that the first Lord's Supper was celebrated in an inn, in the evening at a table, immediately after a supper, while those eating reclined on couches, etc. If one wished to say that everything the evangelists relate about the circumstances of the founding celebration is necessarily required for every proper celebration of the Supper, then all the circumstances named would necessarily have to be counted as required for it as well. But who will maintain that? Everyone rather perceives that all these circumstances depend on the time and place at and where the Lord's Supper happens to be celebrated on any given occasion, and on the customs and usages that happen to prevail.

Among these circumstances we Lutherans also count this one: that Christ broke the bread at the institution of the Lord's Supper. It is well known that the Jews did not bake, as we Germans do, high bread, but thin bread in the form of our cakes, which, when one wished to eat or distribute it, first had to be broken. Hence it comes that in the Hebrew language "to break bread" means as much as "to distribute." For example, Isaiah 58:7: "Break your bread for the hungry." Lamentations 4:4: "The young children ask for bread, and there is no one to break it for them." By this it is of course not exactly said that the bread of the poor was necessarily broken, but only in general that it should be distributed among them — which among the Jews, however, took place precisely by means of breaking.

Now since, on that night, some of this kind of bread was left over from the preceding supper, Christ of course also had to break it if he wished to distribute it among the disciples at that time; this was as necessary as that, since it was evening, one should light a lamp. But by this Christ by no means gave the command that this manner of distribution must be observed at all times and in all places, even where no bread requiring breaking is in use. Far be it! Even those Christians who are not accustomed to breaking the bread into pieces in the Lord's Supper nevertheless remain, therefore, like the first Christians, "in the apostles' doctrine, and in fellowship, and in the breaking of bread," provided only that the blessed bread is distributed among them according to Christ's institution and is partaken of in true faith — just as those keep that command in Isaiah 58:7 who give the poor not a broken-off piece of bread, but a whole one.

We Lutherans, however, do not for that reason hold it to be wrong in and of itself to break the bread exactly as Christ broke it; we hold it, for the reasons given, to be just as unnecessary as that one should recline at a table for it, hold the celebration in the evening, first hold a common meal, and the like.

The matter is so clear that anyone can well understand it; yet we must nevertheless fear that perhaps someone who is not accustomed to thinking sharply may suppose that we present it this way only in order to justify our own church. For the sake of such persons we wish to cite the testimonies of two famous Reformed church teachers who did indeed reproach the Lutherans for omitting the breaking of bread, but nevertheless had to confess that it was neither commanded by Christ nor belonged to the essence of the Holy Sacrament.

The first is Beza (from 1558 the intimate friend and colleague in office of Calvin at Geneva), who writes: "It amounts to the same thing whether one breaks a single loaf into many pieces during the act, or distributes small round loaves that have already been divided into pieces beforehand according to the loaf." (Lib. 99 et resp. 9, 194.) In another passage the same writer states: "It is still the Supper, if only the main thing and the pure essential is observed, even if one also omits the breaking of bread." (Epist. 2, vol. 3, p. 169.)

The second is Zanchius (from 1553 professor at Strasbourg, later at Heidelberg); he writes: "The breaking of bread is not to be introduced when the greater part of the church is against it, lest a division arise on that account, and lest, in wishing to break the bread, we at the same time break and tear apart the body of the church . . . That some suppose the breaking is commanded on account of these words, 'Do this in remembrance of me,' in this they err, in my judgment — both because it is evident that this command does not refer to Christ's act, 'he broke it,' but to the command to take and eat the bread; and also because otherwise it would follow that our preachers do wrong in that they alone break the bread, since this command — even if it were understood as referring to the breaking of bread — would concern not themselves alone, but all believers, to all of whom he had previously said: Take, eat." (Lib. Epist. I, f. 238.)

How does it come, then, that in spite of this so many Reformed insist so earnestly and strictly on the breaking of bread? The reason is not hard to guess. They regard the sacraments merely as ceremonies which give no grace, but are only meant to indicate, signify, and represent it. Of Holy Baptism they believe that it does not effect regeneration but only signifies it; that it is not an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, but only indicates it. Of the Lord's Supper they believe that the body and blood of Christ are not truly present in it at all, but that these heavenly goods are only represented in it under the bread and wine; that the Lord's Supper is properly nothing but a spectacle, in which, through various ceremonies, the suffering of Christ is depicted and thereby called to remembrance — so that, for example, the breaking of the bread is meant to signify that the body of Christ was broken. Given such a doctrine, the Reformed must of course insist on the breaking of bread, because according to them the main point of their Supper lies precisely in this.

Yet anyone can easily see how erroneous that assumption is, for, in the first place, the body of Christ was not broken in a literal sense at all, but only in a figurative sense (John 19:36; compare Exodus 12:46); but if the breaking of bread were meant to be a symbolic act, and to signify something thereby, then naturally what is signified by it could not in turn be something figurative, but would have to be something real — that is, a real breaking of the body of Christ; but since, as has been said, no such thing occurred, it is clear that Christ broke the bread only because he wished to distribute it, and not because he wished thereby to institute a symbolic act. This, moreover, must also necessarily be concluded from the fact that in that case Christ would also have had to command that some of the wine be poured out, in order thereby, on the other side, likewise to indicate symbolically the shedding of his blood.*) We would further merely mention that it would evidently be blasphemous if a minister of the church wished even symbolically to break the body of Christ.

Now if the Reformed had insisted on the breaking of bread only because they attached to this ceremony a meaning that, according to Christ's will, it was never supposed to have at all, that alone would already be questionable, and reason enough to let that ceremony go, so that it should not give occasion for an interpretation contrary to Christ's meaning. But the Reformed have gone even further; they have even openly declared that, by strictly insisting on that ceremony, they intended to tear out of Christians' hearts the biblical doctrine of the presence of the body

*) That the Reformed themselves feel how the two belong together may be seen clearly from the way they speak of both, whereby, however, they also reveal that their thoughts are of their own making. We refer here only to a passage from "The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul," by the Reformed writer Doddridge, which reads as follows: "Let one look at the bread, how it is broken, and the wine, how it is poured out; does not this give a moving representation of our Jesus, how his body was torn to pieces through his sufferings, and his holy blood poured out on the ground like nothing but water?" (See the edition of the American Tract Society, p. 247.)