LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2001, Page 407

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ADDITIONAL THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS AND REPORTS—OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT 407

Sacrament as anything more than a form of the Word to which faith
responds to make the sacramental action complete.

Without formally disowning the historic doctrinal documents,
the Agreement provides a new operative statement for understand-
ing the Lord’s Supper, which for all practical purposes can only be
regarded as an interpretative confession: “while neither Lutheran
nor Reformed profess to explain how Christ is present and received
in the Supper, both churches affirm that ‘Christ himself is the host
at the table . . . and that Christ himself is fully present and received
in the Supper.’ This expresses the traditional Reformed view of
the Lord’s Supper. Granted, we can no more know the “how”
(method) of the real presence than we can know the “how” of the
incarnation. Yet, identifying “where” Christ is, as well as “what” is
present and received in the Supper, is exactly what the Lutheran
Confessions do. He is present in the bread and the wine in such a
way that, by virtue of sacramental union, bread and wine are actu-
ally His body and blood. These are received specifically by the
mouth (manducatio oralis) and not merely by faith. Unbelievers
too receive the true body and blood with the mouth (manducatio
indignorton), since by definition they have no faith at all. Thus re-
ception of the Sacrament by faith is dependent first on Christ’s
presence in the elements and then on our receiving Him with our
mouths. Lutherans have insisted that the bodily reception of Christ
exists apart from and independently of faith. Christ is actually
sacramentally present before and apart from faith. Faith does not
make or contribute to the Sacrament, but faith is created and con-
firmed and responds to Christ in the Sacrament (AC XIII). This is
the whole point of the manducatio indignorum and the manducatio
oralis. Formula of Concord VII confesses this as the teaching of
the Augustana, the Wittenberg Concord (1536), and the Great Con-
fession (1528) of Martin Luther, who understood the Augustana
better than anyone else (FC, SD VII, 33).

At first glance, it might appear that. even though Lutherans and
Reformed have differences on how the sacramental elements are
to be understood, they do have a common understanding about
Christ being the host at the table, and they can aftirm that He is
fully present and received in the Supper. This is a totally false as-
sumption. The Reformed see the Spirit and not Christ as the real
giver of the Sacrament. They are forced into this position by their
doctrine of Christ’s human nature, which does not and cannot re-
ceive and is not affected by the divine nature (genus maiestaticum).
Their doctrine of the local session of Jesus at God's right hand is a
logical conclusion of their Christology. Though they teach that the
divine nature is permanently attached to the human nature, that
human nature is confined to heaven and is not present on earth.
Thus Lutherans and Reformed have a different understanding of
what it means that Christ is the host of the Lord’s Supper. For the
Reformed Christ does not really give His body and blood in the
bread and wine.?-

Any discussion of Christ’s presence in His human nature of
course brings up the thorny issue of the historical Jesus, whose
bodily resurrection is often denied or “reinterpreted” among both
liberal Lutherans and liberal Reformed. This redefinition has been
going on since the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, and was re-
inforced by the nineteenth-century “quest for the historical Jesus.”
Though the first two “quests” were declared dead. a third “quest”
has resurrected the search.** Such a “quest” was unknown during
the Reformation, when all parties to the dispute believed in the res-
urrection, even though the Reformed had their own peculiar views
about the confinement of Christ’s body to a place in heaven. Mare
Lienhard, of the LWF’s Ecumenical Institute in Strasbourg, in-
forms us that the historical-critical approach to the Bible, which
had made possible the Leuenberg Concord, had also made it im-
possible in the Arnoldshain Theses (a precursor to Leuenberg) “to
connect the institution of the Lord’s Supper with the night in which
he was betrayed.” This renders meaningless the Agreement’s ci-
tation from the Leuenberg Concord that “in the Lord’s Supper the
risen Christ imparts himself in his body and blood. . .”

Such language as “Christ himself is host at his table” is wrong-
headed for at least two reasons.** Some 20th century New Testa-
ment scholars, most recently Willi Marxsen, claim that after Jesus’
death, early Christians believed He was present at the table and
later on the table. Again it is not a matter of presence, but where
that presence is. Gradually, a simple Protestant table became a
Catholic altar. This is a word game with prepositions and could be
dismissed, if it were not so serious a matter with dire consequences
for the Church’s faith. Similarly, this kind of thinking sees early
Christians as modcrate Unitarians who later evolved into Trinitari-
ans and prepared the way to Rome. The Germans call this doctrinal
evolution the Katholizisierung of Christian doctrine. Secondly. the
word “is” belongs to the bread and the cup, not to the host.*°

In certain places the Agreement scems consciously to follow
Melanchthon, who attached Christ’s presence to the liturgical ac-
tion and not to the elements, as did Luther. Consider the inclusion
of this citation from the Leuenberg Concord: “We cannot separate
communion with Jesus Christ in his body and blood from the act of
eating and drinking.”*’ Certainly Christ is present in the ritual (act),
but identifying what was eaten and drunk was the historical point of
contention between Lutherans and Reformed.* It is simply not true,
therefore, that Lutherans and Reformed agreed about the fact of the
“Real Presence,” and differed only about the “mode.” Nor is it
true, as the former American Lutheran Church was assured in
preparation for its acceptance of full communion with the Re-
formed in 1986, that Lutheran teaching excludes only Zwingli, but
not Calvin's “spiritual presence,” since “both Lutherans and
Calvinists ardently affirm the reality of Christ’s presence in the
sacrainent.”*

Augustana X’s condemnation clause had Zwingli in view.
Calvin had not yet appeared, and so could not have been in the
minds of Luther, Melanchthon, and the other reformers and princes.
However, Calvin and not Zwingli was the foremost target of the
condemnations of Formula of Concord VI, which meant to safe-
guard the true sense of Augustana X (FC SD VIL, 41-42). True, the
Agreement does not reflect Zwingli’s radical teaching that Christ is
not present in the Sacrament. Yet the milder version, which let the
Reformed “speak of the presence of Christ in the community gath-
ered by the Holy Spirit,”*! is no more allowed by the Augustana
than is nineteenth-century Unitarianism by Article 1, which con-
demns fourth-century Eunomians. Confessional subscription for
Lutherans means that after the historical condemnations are ac-
knowledged and accepted, they continue to be applicable to the
church’s current situation. The Apology (1531), the Treatise
(1537), and the Formula (1577) do precisely this for the Augustana
(1530). By making the condemnations inoperable, the purpose of
the Lutheran Confessions qua confessions is abandoned, so at best
they represent only what certain churches historically believed.
Confessional subscription is rendered meaningless. Not to be cyn-
ical, but can we ask whether the condemnations against the Arians
and Muhammadans are still operative (AC 1)? Or are we faced with
selective confessional condemnation?**

Sundry [tems

(1) Each church’s acceptance of the other’s Baptism is no major
breakthrough and plays no major role in the Agreement, but per-
haps it should have. The Reformed neither believe nor practice
emergency Baptism for infants and presumably also for adults. So
Lutheran parents whose children are in danger of death should not
expect a Reformed pastor serving their congregation to be overly
concerned. ** Also, Lutherans may not be aware that Reformed and
Presbyterian churches often welcome Baptist ministers to their pul-
pits. Ministers of cither confession can serve as regular pastors of
the churches of the other denomination. Reformed and Baptists dif-
fer over the method of administering Baptism and at what age it
should be administered, but are agreed that Baptism does not work

2001 Convention Workbook