# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1847 10 13_S148
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Justus Jonas, Bugenhagen, Cruciger, Myconius, Menius, Weller, and Rorarius were present. According to Seckendorf, all the Upper Germans were present. At the outset, Bucer testified in a long speech how heartily glad he was that this meeting had now come about, and at Wittenberg, how he had for four years now worked toward all becoming unanimous in doctrine, and hoped that the same form of church order would also be established.

Luther answered with great earnestness: "he desired nothing more than a true, steadfast, right unity; he had also had good hope of this. Now, however, recently, provided with Bucer's preface, the letters of Zwingli and Oecolampadius had appeared in print, in which many godless and abominable errors were contained, and in which the doctrine that we defended together with the apostles and with the church was rejected. In addition, he heard that at home they did not teach the presence of Christ in the holy Lord's Supper decisively, but only pressed the spiritual partaking.

"Thus the people remain in the error that there is only bread and wine in the holy Lord's Supper, and since they appealed to their agreement with him, he would then be made a partaker of the perversion of the sacrament. That he could not tolerate. Furthermore, they still continually represented the dispute over the sacrament as a mere quarrel over words. Yet he had fought for the truth of the words of Christ, that His body is present in the Supper, which Zwingli and Oecolampadius had denied. Now he was willing to retract whatever he had written too sharply and too harshly against them; but their doctrine he must curse and condemn as blasphemous, although he commended their persons to the judgment of God. If they now wished to conclude a true concord, they would have to retract and condemn their earlier error, that there is only bread and wine in the holy Lord's Supper, and further to teach with us that the body and blood of Christ are essentially present in the holy Lord's Supper and are received orally both by the godly and by the godless. If they were unwilling to do this, it would be better to let matters go however they might, than for them to make the situation — which was indeed bad and evil enough — a hundred times worse through a fabricated and colored-over Concord. Above all, sincerity was necessary, for even if we could deceive the world, we could not deceive the all-knowing God."

Greatly dismayed by this speech, Bucer began to defend himself at length, but in great confusion. "He was far from deceit; the Strasbourg writing against the Münster Anabaptists, and his own answer to Robert, Bishop of Avranches, bore witness that he meant it sincerely. The letters of Zwingli and Oecolampadius had been printed not only without his knowledge but even against his prohibition; that a letter which he had earlier written for an entirely different purpose had been placed before them as a preface was solely the fault of the printer's greed. They were ready to retract orally what they had wrongly preached, and in writing what they had wrongly written. But they had never taught that in the holy Lord's Supper only bread and wine were given, and not also the true Christ. They had previously thought that Luther and his party, with the doctrine of the true and essential presence, favored the papists. But after they had convinced themselves that Luther denied a natural union of the Lord's body with the bread (consubstantiation), and likewise taught no spatial enclosure of it within the bread (impanation), nor made the sacrament a channel of grace ex opere operato, they had freely confessed as much, in writings and otherwise, now for eight years. They also confessed the oral partaking of the Lord's body in the holy Lord's Supper. For just as Holy Scripture says that John saw the Holy Spirit, although with his bodily eyes he saw no more than the dove, since the Holy Spirit is invisible, so too, on account of the sacramental union between the Lord's body and the bread, one could say that one takes the Lord's body in hand and mouth, although hand and mouth by themselves do not reach the Lord's body. But of the utterly godless, they believed that they received nothing more than bread and wine."

Luther repeated with great earnestness that there should be either a right unity or none at all. For this, however, two things chiefly were necessary. First, that they publicly retract their alien opinion, which was not that of the Lord Christ, of the apostles, and of the church, but which they had nevertheless up to now presumed to spread. Second, that they should henceforth teach the true opinion unanimously with us. In this connection Luther pointed out how they, compelled by the power of the truth, had drawn ever closer to the doctrine of our church. At first they had confessed that the bread in the holy Lord's Supper was not like other bread, nor the wine like ordinary wine, but that it was a signification and a memorial of the absent body of Christ. After that they had come even closer to us, in that they had confessed that the body and blood of Christ were present in the holy Lord's Supper, yet in a spiritual manner — that is, He sits at the right hand of God, but the mind, through its contemplation and remembrance, brings it about that the body is present to the bread and the blood to the wine, just as when, in a tragedy, one represents Hector symbolically through another person. "At last you come," he said, "even closer to us, since at Coburg you freely acknowledged to me, and now in several books write the very same thing, that the bread is the true, natural, essential body of Christ, and is received with the mouth by those to whom it is offered or given — but only when they are believing disciples of Christ; but when it is given to unbelievers, it is then nothing more than bread and wine.

[148]

And so, with you, the body of Christ must be present not by virtue of the power of Christ, who has so ordained and said it, but rather by virtue of our faith and according to our thoughts, which bring it about that Christ, who is at the right hand of the Father, is present to our faith — if we believe; but if we do not believe, then He cannot be present, but is, to those who do not believe, only an empty, bare sign. It is now necessary here, so that no cause for doubt or suspicion remain on either side, that you, and the others with you who have been sent here, declare to us whether you teach and hold that the bread is the body of Christ, given for us, and the wine is the blood of Christ, shed for us, by the power and institution of Christ, who has so ordained it — whether the minister who administers it, or the one who receives it, be worthy or unworthy. For the Evangelists testify with these words, 'This is my body,' and, 'this cup is the blood of the New Testament,' that the Lord Christ Himself so spoke. Now is what He says true, or is it false? Or does it only become true when we believe it? Or must He be false and lying, if we do not believe? You must indeed also confess that the sacrament is administered without distinction to the pious and the wicked, to believers and unbelievers, to saints and hypocrites, or, as Paul speaks, to the worthy and the unworthy, and is received by them, and yet the worthiness or unworthiness of those who receive it changes nothing in the institution of Christ, who has so spoken. That, then, in the hand of even the unworthy minister, and in the mouth of even the unworthy one who eats and drinks it, there truly is what Christ says — namely, His body and blood — not because it is given or believed, but because Christ commands and says it; on these matters you may confer among yourselves, and tomorrow, after good deliberation, answer what you can confess and are willing to teach with us."

On May 23 they came together again in Luther's house. Luther repeated the two questions previously posed, whereupon Bucer declared: "Before this time he had not understood many things clearly and distinctly, and as a consequence had also not taught rightly and purely enough; but as soon as he had come to a better understanding, he had corrected and retracted his error. He was also now ready to retract it, both orally and in writing, so that he might lead no one into error. Concerning the Lord's Supper, he confessed, for his own person and at the same time in the name of the rest, that the bread is truly the body of Christ and the wine is truly the blood of Christ, and that the body and the blood are given, through the minister of Christ, without distinction, to all who take it — unless the institution and words of Christ are falsified. The natural, essential body of Christ is also truly received, not only with the heart, but also with the mouth of those who receive it — worthily unto salvation, unworthily unto judgment. Only the gross, spatial, and natural (Capernaitic) eating had he wished to deny; on the other hand, he confessed the eating with hand and mouth that takes place according to Christ's order and institution."