# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1847 10 13_S27
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

lightenment and zeal for truth of the men through whom God caused Holy Scripture to be composed; the shining miracles by which the doctrine of Holy Scripture is confirmed as divine; the concurring testimony of the Church spread over the whole globe (not merely the Roman one); the steadfastness of the martyrs; the acknowledging testimony which even the non-Christian nations cannot withhold from the doctrine contained in Holy Scripture; the swift and successful spread of the Christian religion over the globe and its wondrous preservation despite the most bitter and repeated persecutions; and finally also the terrible and striking punishments which have struck despisers and persecutors of the divine Word. — These outward testimonies will find their particular application in moving unbelievers to the zealous reading and contemplation of Holy Scripture, so that afterward, God willing, the testimony of the Holy Spirit may also become theirs. And although these inward and outward testimonies, each taken alone, are not absolutely decisive, they can nevertheless very well produce an inward moral conviction, and alongside the testimony of the Holy Spirit they have no small value. In particular, purely historical questions — for example, in what language a book of Holy Scripture was originally composed — can only be answered by calling upon them, and here, naturally, the testimony of the Church is to be very highly valued, especially the testimony of the earliest Church teachers, who lived at the same time as, or soon after, the Apostles.

(Conclusion to follow.)

Why are the words of institution, "This is my body; this is my blood," properly to be taken literally?

(Continued.)

A third reason which Mr. Nast adduces for his opinion that the words of institution cannot be taken literally and properly is this: Christ speaks of his body, "which is given for you," and of his blood, "which is shed for you"; now, at the time of the institution of the Lord's Supper, Christ's body and blood had not yet actually been given and shed; therefore Christ cannot here be speaking of his real body and blood; under the words, "This is my body, which is given for you," etc., one can therefore understand nothing else than that the bread and the wine should be merely the outward, visible proof of the body given for us and the blood shed for us of Christ — that is, of the reconciliation established through him; for the reconciliation was indeed already, in the Spirit, that is, in the thoughts of God, as good as accomplished from eternity, hence Christ could speak of it as of an already accomplished act.

Mr. Nast here draws a conclusion, roughly like the following:

[27]

Christ, at the institution of the Lord's Supper, speaks of his betrayer, and says: "Woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed." (Luke 22:21-22.)

Now Judas had not, at that time, actually yet betrayed Christ;

Therefore Christ cannot, at that time, have been speaking of the real Judas.

That this conclusion must be faulty somewhere is known to everyone who is acquainted with the passion history, even if he is not otherwise familiar with the properties a correct syllogism must have; for that Christ, in those words, meant no other person than the real Judas is beyond doubt. Mr. Nast's conclusion, however, suffers from the same defect.*) Wherein, then, does the fault lie? In this: Mr. Nast has not considered that it is a figure of speech very frequently occurring in Holy Scripture to put the present tense for the future tense — namely, to speak of a thing that is yet to happen as though it were happening at that very moment or had already happened. Such an enallage, or interchange, occurs, for example, in the words of Christ: "I lay down my life for the sheep" (John 10:15), instead of "I will lay it down" (as indeed he really says in John 6:51: "The bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world"). This manner of speech occurs so often in Holy Scripture that Luther, in translating, sometimes at once substitutes the future for the present tense used in the original, for the better understanding of the matter; when Luther, for example, translates: "When I drink it new in my Father's kingdom," the Greek has only: "When I drink it new," etc. (Matthew 26:29). From this it follows: when Christ, at the Lord's Supper, says, "This is my body, which is given for you," this simply means as much as: "which will be given for you." The supposed difficulty allegedly contained in that manner of expression is therefore only an imagined one, and there is accordingly not the least ground in it for the opinion that Christ was speaking merely of a sign of his body and of the giving of the same, since indeed, a few hours afterward, the real body of Christ was in fact given and his real blood shed.

*) In Mr. Nast's conclusion there is, moreover, this additional fault, that he alters the words "which is given for you" for his own purpose and speaks of it as though Christ had said: "which has been given for you." For strictly speaking, Christ would also have had to speak thus even according to Mr. Nast's own interpretation, if he, as Mr. Nast would have it, had meant to speak of the reconciliation as of an already accomplished act. Moreover, it is odd enough that Mr. Nast grants that Christ could present the reconciliation as already accomplished, but not his body as already given. Does Mr. Nast not see that the very explanation he offers of Christ's manner of speaking, "which is given for you," proves no more for his own opinion than for the Lutheran doctrine? For if Christ could speak of the reconciliation, before its actual accomplishment, as of one already accomplished, and present it as such, then he could likewise speak of his body, before its being given, as of one already given, and present it as such.

Moreover, one must not think, when it is asserted that interchanges of tense are found in Holy Scripture, that this means the manner of speech of Holy Scripture is inexact, that in it one tense is often arbitrarily put for another, and that everyone may therefore interpret it as he pleases. Far from it! Such an assertion would be a blasphemy against God. Precisely in Holy Scripture, every word and every form of it is so exactly chosen that no other word and no other form of it would express the sense of the Holy Spirit so perfectly. In Holy Scripture every grammatical figure has a deep reason, which it is the blessed duty of every reader of the Bible to seek out. This is indeed also the case with the enallage here in question. For Christ says of his body, "which is given for you," and not "will be given," because in that night in which he instituted the Holy Sacrament, his final suffering had already begun. —

The fourth reason why Mr. Nast believes he must depart from the words of Christ at the institution of the Lord's Supper is this: unless one is willing to assume that Christ presented merely signs of his body and blood, one must believe that the holy Apostles, at the first celebration of the Lord's Supper, celebrated a different meal than we do now, since at that time Christ still had a natural body, but now he has a glorified one. Mr. Nast here proceeds from the false presupposition that Christ, if he really and truly gives his body, must give it either just as it was born of Mary and put to death on the cross, or as it now, after his resurrection and ascension, is as a glorified body in heaven. Neither of the two, however, is the case according to the doctrine of Holy Scripture which the Lutheran Church holds fast and confesses. Christ indeed says of what he presents that it is the body "which is given for us," and that it is the blood "which is shed for us" (Luke 22:19-20), but he does not say that both are given to us in the Lord's Supper in the manner in which they were given up to death and shed for us, still less does he say a single word to the effect that his body is given to us in the manner in which it now, glorified, is in heaven; and if Mr. Nast is under the impression that the latter is believed and taught in the Lutheran Church, he does not know the Lutheran doctrine at all. The Lutherans indeed confess not only that in the Lord's Supper no other body than the one sacrificed on the cross, and no other blood than the one shed there, of Christ is present, because Christ expressly says this in the words of institution; they also confess that this body is now in the state of glorification, because Holy Scripture also plainly says this elsewhere;