# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 05 30_S157
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

7. But we hasten toward the conclusion. We now wish to offer our readers just one more reason why we must hold fast to the proper sense of the words, "This is my body; this is my blood"—a reason that deprives false interpreters of even their last refuge and cuts off all further disputation entirely. This reason is: because if one truly wanted to take those words of Christ strictly as a trope (in an improper, figurative sense), the most absurd sense would result.

As is well known, the thing for which one wishes to use a tropical or figurative expression must have a certain equality or similarity to the thing that expression properly and originally denotes. One can, for example, use the figurative expression "my springtime" instead of "my youth," because youth has a certain equality or similarity to springtime: just as spring is the first and loveliest season of the year and the time when nature unfolds, so youth is the first and loveliest time of human life, in which a person begins to develop in body and soul.*) Or, to cite a biblical example, Christ says: "My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to finish his work." John 4:34. Why does Christ call this "his food"? He means to say: just as a person's hunger is satisfied by partaking of food, and as food brings him refreshment, so the hunger, or the most intense longing of my soul, is satisfied thereby, and my heart refreshed, in that I do the will of my Father and am able to finish his work.

*) Whoever wishes to read a whole series of the loveliest and most striking images under which old age is portrayed in the Bible should attentively compare the remarkable passage Eccl. 12:1–7.

Let us now apply this to the words of institution: "This is my body." If the word "body" here were truly a trope or a figurative expression, what then would its proper sense have to be? Evidently this: that what I hand you here is something that has a certain equality or similarity to my body, so that I can figuratively call it my body—something like this: as my body is the reality of my shadow, so the bread would be the New Testament reality of my shadow in the Old Testament. That would be a proper trope; and in this way Scripture itself does indeed use the word body or corpus in a figurative sense in Colossians 2:16–17: "Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a feast day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days, which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ." So we would indeed have a sense that the words of institution could bear if the word "body" were a trope—but what sort of sense? What reasonable person would maintain that mere bread is the true essence of Christ, and that, say, the Passover lamb was the shadow of Christ? Yet Holy Scripture uses the word "body of Christ" in still another sense as a figurative expression: it figuratively so names the church, that is, the invisible congregation of believers and saints on earth. God, writes St. Paul of Christ, "hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all." Ephesians 1:22–23. For just as the head stands in the most intimate fellowship with its body, so too the most intimate fellowship exists between Christ and the church; and just as the head governs the whole body, and the body, cut off from its head, must necessarily die, so Christ governs his church, gives it life, and preserves it. Should anyone, then, be tempted to interpret the words of institution accordingly, so as to be able to say that a trope is present in them? Probably no one; for what could be more absurd than to say: the bread in the Holy Supper is the spiritual body of Christ, namely his church, the believers and saints on earth? It is thus clear: if one wishes to interpret the word "body" in the words of institution as a trope according to the rules of language, one arrives at the most absurd sense of all.

Here perhaps some will object that there is indeed a trope that gives the most natural and fitting sense—namely, the so-called metonymy, that is, the rhetorical figure by which the name of one thing is often substituted for another: for example, the effect for the cause, the vessel for the drink contained in it, the thing signified for the sign, etc. Such a metonymy, it is claimed, is also found in the words "This is my body; this is my blood": here the thing signified is supposedly put in place of the sign, body and blood being confused with the signs of body and blood.*) To this two things must be answered. First, body and blood cannot be taken as signs of the body and blood of Christ, because Christ expressly says of the former, "which is given for you" (Luke 22:19), and of the latter, "which is shed for many, for the forgiveness of sins" (Matt. 26:28). Now it is not a sign of Christ's body but his true body that is given for us, and not a sign of his blood but his true blood that has been shed for us. A second reason against assuming such a metonymy in the words of institution, of the kind proposed, is this: no such metonymy occurs either in Holy Scripture or in the writing of any sensible author. Luther already pointed this out to Oecolampadius; he writes in his great Confession: "Secondly, it is also not true that such a trope of Oecolampadius's exists in any common speech or language in the whole world, and whoever brings me a single constant example of it, to him I will give my neck."

*) This is the interpretation that Oecolampadius first gave of the words of institution, and after him Calvin: "This is the sign of my body and of my blood."

No one has yet come forward who could produce such a confirming example as Luther demanded. There are, indeed, turns of phrase in which the thing signified is named while the sign is meant; this seems to occur, among other places, in Paul's admonition: "For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels." 1 Cor. 11:10. Orthodox theologians, too, interpret this passage thus: the woman is to wear a covering on her head as a sign that she is subject to the power or authority of her husband. But even granting that other, similar turns of phrase may be found, no reasonable person will or can call a thing outright by name and mean thereby only a sign of it; no one, for example, will or can say outright, "The scepter is royal power, the scales are the administration of justice," although these are indeed symbolic signs of these things. Some have indeed wanted to draw into this the manner of speech whereby, pointing at the picture or the statue of a person—say, of Paul, of Luther, of Huss—one is accustomed to say, "This is Paul, this is Luther, this is Huss"; but everyone sees, even with little reflection, that with pictures and statues there is a quite particular reason why one can speak this way—a reason that is absent with other things. For in beholding such pictures or statues one actually does see the persons represented before oneself; hence one can also say: this is a painted Paul, a marble Luther, an iron-cast Huss. But does one likewise, in beholding the bread and wine, see Christ's body and blood before oneself in such a way that one could say: this is Christ's breaden body? and so forth.

As distasteful as it is to examine closely the grounds by which some have sought to support their delusion that the simple words of the Lord, "This is my body; this is my blood," cannot be taken in their proper sense, it is nevertheless faith-strengthening to see how rotten these grounds always prove to be once held up to the light, and how the seemingly greatest wisdom expended for the destruction of divine truth is in the end put to shame as ridiculous folly.

Before we close this article, we must still mention one objection that is raised in particular against our church's teaching on the Holy Supper. Not infrequently one hears in reply: if in the words of institution one must indeed hold strictly to the letter and take them entirely in their proper sense, then it is not the Lutheran but the Roman teaching on the Holy Supper that is correct; for then one may not believe that the body and blood of Christ are present in, with, and under the bread and wine, given and received with the mouth by worthy and unworthy alike, but rather that the bread and the wine