# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 05 02_S142
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

were also outward acts commanded by God, with which God had bound promises of grace, which, laid hold of in faith, made men righteous and blessed. So, for example, with circumcision was joined the promise: "I will be your God" (Gen. 17:7); whoever therefore grasped in faith this promise attached to the covenant of circumcision was, in the time of the Old Testament, made blessed through circumcision just as truly as the Christian is through his baptism, which corresponds to the former and is therefore called the circumcision made without hands, Col. 2:11. A great difference, however, exists between the sacraments of the Old and those of the New Testament with respect to their essence, their content. For the Old Testament sacraments had only the type, the New Testament sacraments now have the substance; those had the shadow, these now have the body itself. For thus does Holy Scripture describe the difference that exists between the two Testaments. Col. 2:16-17 it is said: "Let no one therefore judge you concerning food (forbidden in the Old Testament), or drink, or a fixed feast day, or a new moon, or sabbaths; which are a shadow of things to come (reserved for the time of the New Testament), but the body is of Christ." Further it is said Heb. 10:1: "The law (the Old Testament) has the shadow of the good things to come, and not the very substance of the things themselves." Further it is said of the priests of the Old Testament, Heb. 8:5: "Who serve the copy and shadow of heavenly things."

From this it is clear that those who understand the words of institution of the New Testament sacrament figuratively lead us back out of the New Testament into the Old again, make of the Christian Supper once more a Jewish Passover meal, of the fulfillment a mere promise, of Christ a Moses, and of him who is the minister of the holy things and of the true tabernacle (Heb. 8:2) a servant of types and shadows, and thus make Jews of Christians as well. No—as surely as the New Covenant in general contains the substance of the Old Testament types, so surely does the holy Supper in particular contain, not again an image, a figure, but the essential body and the essential blood of Jesus Christ, of the true Passover Lamb himself, which was present only in image in the Old Testament Passover meal.

3. A third reason which compels us to take the words of institution literally, is that otherwise there would be no certain doctrine of the holy Supper at all. Augustine says quite truly: "Nothing that pertains to faith and morals is expressed obscurely in Holy Scripture, which is not also expressed most clearly in other passages." (De doctr. Christ. lib. II, c. 6.) Figurative modes of speech do indeed serve to make a doctrine already clearly revealed pleasing and vivid, but no doctrine can be shown to be clearly revealed for which one can appeal to nothing but figurative, non-literal expressions. Only such doctrines, therefore, can be regarded as settled articles of the Christian faith as are expressed, in at least one passage of Holy Scripture, in clear, plain, literal words. Had we, for example, for proof of the doctrine of redemption only the passage: "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; the same shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel" (Gen. 3:15): how precarious would then be the foundation for the doctrine of redemption! But, thank God, we find this doctrine set forth in innumerable other passages of Scripture in plain, literal words. How precarious, further, would the doctrine of justification stand, if we had for it nothing more than the figurative representation of it through the healing of those who looked in faith upon the bronze serpent! John 3:14-15. What, finally, would we know of the necessary self-denial, if we knew nothing about it beyond what Christ says, Matt. 5:29-30: "If your right eye offends you, pluck it out and cast it from you. If your right hand offends you, cut it off and cast it from you"?

There is no doubt that Scripture would be like those heathen oracles, which gave only ambiguous, riddling answers, if the articles of faith, or even but one of them, were set before us in figurative words. Then no certainty of faith would be possible. Then we could not rely upon Scripture itself, but would have to rely upon human interpretations of it. But St. Peter says not only clearly and plainly: "Knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation" (2 Pet. 1:20), but Scripture is also so constituted, and as a divine revelation it can be constituted in no other way, than that it needs no human interpretation. Many doctrines, to be sure, are set forth here and there under images, parables, and hidden sayings, but there is no article of faith that is not expounded and set forth, at least in one passage of Scripture, in simple, unambiguous, literal words. Let us now apply this to the doctrine of the holy Supper. It is expressly (ex professo) treated in the following five passages: Matt. 26:26-28. Mark 14:22-24. Luke 22:19-20. 1 Cor. 10:15-21. 11:23-34. If we now compare these sedes doctrinae, that is, these chief passages in which the article of the holy Supper has its proper seat, do we find among them even one in which the doctrine of the Supper, allegedly expressed elsewhere in non-literal words, is here set forth together with other literal terms? No; wherever we ask Holy Scripture concerning this doctrine, we always receive the same answer: "This is my body; this is my blood," or, what is the same: "This is the communion of the body and blood of Christ; this is the cup, the new testament in my blood." Just as surely as every article of the Christian faith is revealed in its chief passages in clear, distinct, simple, unambiguous, literal words, just as surely does Scripture likewise speak in those passages concerning the holy Supper in plain words, and just as surely, therefore, do we have the right understanding of those words of institution only when we understand them in their proper sense, as they read. Nothing else remains for us: either we must confess that there is no certain doctrine of Scripture concerning the holy Supper at all, or we must accept the one that the proper sense of the words of its institution gives us.

Has not history, too, more than sufficiently confirmed that where one departs from the proper sense of these words, all certainty and unity must cease? As united, for example, as all the Reformed are in holding that Christ's body and blood are not truly and essentially present in the holy Supper, so disunited are they as to what, then, is the true sense of Christ's words: "This is my body; this is my blood." Carlstadt interpreted them one way, Schwenckfeld another, Zwingli another, Oecolampadius another, Calvin yet another; and even now one can scarcely find two among those of the Reformed persuasion who agree on this. Nor can it be otherwise: where one departs from God's clear Word, there a Babylonian confusion must follow; there one is driven out onto the wide, tossing sea of uncertainty and is given over to every wind of human thought, which drives one man this way and another that way. One may, indeed, in such faithlessness toward men, and apart from trial, present oneself as certain and courageous, but before God, and in the hour of trial, one cannot stand firm upon it. Quite rightly Melanchthon writes: "I find no reason why we should depart from this opinion, namely that Christ is present in the holy Supper with his body and blood. It may be that such an opinion is more agreeable to an idle mind, being more in accordance with human reason, especially when it is adorned and embellished with cleverly devised arguments; but how will it stand up in the trial, when conscience shall dispute what cause it had for departing from the customary opinion of the churches? Then these words, 'This is my body,' will be nothing but thunderbolts. What will a terrified conscience then set against it? With what Scripture and with what Word of God will it defend and persuade itself that Christ's words are to be taken in a figurative sense?"

Blessed, therefore, are they who hold fast to God's Word! Among them there is unity. There one finds no difference of faith, whether one asks the most profound scholar or the simplest schoolchild; for the words "This is my body; this is my blood," taken simply as they read, must awaken the very same conception in the heart of the unlearned child as in the heart of the most learned doctor of Holy Scripture. And what is most glorious, the