Reformation Church History CH502 LESSON 07 of 24 W. Robert Godfrey, PhD Experience: President, Westminster Seminary California This is lecture 7 in the series on Reformation Church History. Most of our attention up until this point in our study of the Reformation has been focused on Martin Luther and the events and work that he did, and today we want to turn our attention to another leading figure in the early days of the Reformation; namely, Ulrich Zwingli. Zwingli was a reform leader in Switzerland; he came to prominence because of his work in German-speaking Switzerland in the city of Zurich, and we want to look a little bit at the influence and work of Ulrich Zwingli in the Reformation. As I ve already said, Zwingli worked in Switzerland; therefore, outside of Germany, outside the area in which Luther worked, and outside of the immediate control of the emperor. Although Switzerland was still technically a part of the Holy Roman Empire, for all practical purposes it had become independent of the imperial administration in reign and had drawn in on itself as a decentralized and yet still a confederated political unit. The political situation in Switzerland was a division of the land into cantons or providences with a large measure of local autonomy, and so it was in the German-speaking part of Switzerland where Zwingli found himself. In Zwingli s day, Switzerland had become famous in Europe as a supplier of mercenaries, that is, of troops who fought for whomever would pay them, and so a good deal of the income of Switzerland was derived from that source of mercenary troops, and as we ll see that has a role to play in Zwingli s own development and in his own thought. Ulrich Zwingli was born on January 1, 1487; therefore, only a few weeks younger than Martin Luther. His early training at university was at the University of Vienna and at the University of Basel, and in both of those centers he came in contact with the rising humanist and Renaissance education of the time, and Zwingli was very much drawn to that education. Zwingli, unlike Luther, was not trained so much primarily in medieval theology or derived his interest in study primarily from theological and religious 1 of 15
questions, but Zwingli reflected much more the Renaissance and humanist spirit of his day. He was drawn to his study, especially in the area of classics, to some extent to music, and Zwingli was a fine musician, and was drawn into the Bible through the influence of some of the great Renaissance teachers of his day, particularly Erasmus and Pico della Mirandola. That influence led him to want to study the Bible in the original languages and to begin to pursue a rather Erasmian notion of a need for reform in the church, in terms particularly of a reform of the morals and of the educated level of the church. In 1506 Zwingli was ordained to the priesthood and served in a small village in Switzerland. In this period of his life, he also served as chaplain to Swiss mercenary troops. Both in 1513 and in 1515 he was accompanying large bodies of Swiss troops, and especially after he saw the terrible defeat of some Swiss troops in 1515, he became convinced that the mercenary system was morally and spiritually corrupt, and he began to take an increasingly strong stand against that involvement of the Swiss youth in those mercenary endeavors. He continued his humanist studies as he went to serve in the church at Einsiedeln, and there he moved more and more under the influence of Erasmus under the direction of a piety that was increasingly inward, less attached the formal, and what he came to see as superstitious practices of the church. He stressed very much a Christ-centered piety of following of Christ in ways of discipleship and began to establish a reputation as a fine preacher because of his training in Renaissance studies. Because of the rhetorical element of the Renaissance tradition, he was able to make quite an impression as a speaker and as a preacher, and as a result of that he was called to serve at the Grossmunster Church in Zurich, to serve as a preacher in that leading city of Germanspeaking Switzerland, and so in January 1, 1519, he went to Zurich and began to preach there. Zurich at that time was probably a city of seven thousand people, which doesn t seem to be huge by our standards by any means, but nonetheless was a leading city of that part of Europe and the responsibility then given to the young Zwingli was considerable. In 1519 Zurich was hit be a terrible plague, a terrible outbreak of the bubonic plague, and estimates range anywhere from one-quarter to one-half of the population dying as a result of that plague. It appears that that terrible circumstance had an impact on Zwingli and forced him to reflect more deeply on what it is he should 2 of 15
preach, what was the gospel, what was the comfort he could offer in the midst of such devastation. And it appears that about this time is when he began to become more familiar with the writings of Martin Luther and that Luther s own writings began to deepen Zwingli s understanding of the gospel and his appreciation of biblical truth, and to lead him more in the direction of a reformer in a Protestant sense rather the kind of Erasmian and moral and educational reformer that he had been. Later in his life Zwingli would regularly insist that he had come to an understanding of the gospel and the need for the reform of the church independent of Luther, and that claim is somewhat difficult to evaluate, just as it s difficult to evaluate the exact extent of Luther s influence on Zwingli. It s clear that for many like Zwingli, Erasmus was the initial influence in moving them to question certain teachings of the church, in leading them to a conviction that the church needed to be reformed, and so it is probably with sincerity that Zwingli felt that he had come independent of Luther to a sense of the need of the reform of the church. At the same time there doesn t seem to be much heart evidence that Zwingli had a deep and profound understanding of the theological issues of reformation until he was acquainted with the writings of Martin Luther, so it may well be that on those great areas of Scripture alone as the authority in the church, justification by faith alone, that in those areas Luther was the major influence. And although Luther and Zwingli were contemporaries, it does seem that Luther had a significant role through his writings in the development of Zwingli as a reformer. Just as Luther in his early days had moved toward external reforms only very slowly and gradually, so too did Zwingli. In 1522, Zwingli begins to preach against the practice of imposing a fast in Lent; that is, it had become the medieval practice of the church that people gave up especially meat in Lent in the forty days before Easter, and this had become a requirement and was viewed as a solemn spiritual obligation. Zwingli, understanding something of the freedom of the gospel, began to insist that this requirement was contrary to the freedom of Christian people and therefore needed to be removed as an obligation. The church had clearly communicated to people that if they failed to fast in Lent they were committing sins that might well carry their souls damned to hell, and Zwingli became convinced that this was a burden that ought not to be placed upon the people of God. 3 of 15
Again on the surface, rather like Luther s beginning with the indulgences, the issue itself seems rather small, but the principle of Christian liberty behind what Zwingli was saying was very important, and his basic position here was that the church had no right to impose upon the consciences of people requirements beyond what God s Word itself laid down. And from this initial criticism then of fasting during Lent, Zwingli went on to oppose other ecclesiastical traditions of church and in that way always using the Bible as his standard and his measure. When some in the community began to criticize him and suggest that he had no right to attack ecclesiastical tradition, Zwingli challenged them to a debate, and so the first Zurich disputation was held beginning on January 29, 1523, and in that disputation, Zwingli begins to defend clearly the basic elements of the Protestant Reformation. He insisted that the Word of God was the only rule of faith, he insisted that salvation was by faith alone, he insisted that Christ was the only mediator between man and God, rejecting the notion that the saints or Mary can serve a mediatorial function, and proclaiming that the Mass was only a commemoration of the death of Christ; therefore, rejecting the sacrificial nature of the Mass and rejecting thereby a lot of the medieval theology on the Lord s Supper. Zwingli was regarded as successful in that disputation and had increasing support then not only from the people but also from the city government, and in 1524 moved to purify the churches, as he put it. For Zwingli that meant the removal of all art and all symbolism from the churches. He had come to believe that such art and symbolism, even the symbol of the cross, was superstitious and tended to promote idolatry, and therefore he felt that for the sake of the people of God all temptations to superstition should be removed. For Zwingli that included the removal of organs from the church and the abolishing of choirs, and indeed Zwingli abolished congregational singing in the church, feeling that that too was somehow superstitious and excessively emotional in the worship of God. There s an irony here that Zwingli, a very fine musician, seems to have turned so deliberately against the use of music in the church. Luther on the other hand continued to feel that music was a great blessing and a great boon to the church, and Luther encouraged the writing of hymns as a way by which the people of God could be instructed in the truth. 4 of 15
John Calvin would later take a somewhat middle road, initially being in favor of congregational singing but limiting that singing only to unison singing. Calvin early in his career didn t like harmony in the singing. He thought maybe that was too emotional and led people too far astray. He was later convinced by one of the hymn writers of Geneva that harmony wasn t really that dangerous, and he relented somewhat. But Calvin did put a great stress on the singing of the Psalms, and that became an important part of the Reformed tradition or the Calvinistic tradition. For a long time most Calvinists did not sing hymns, or at least not sing very many hymns, but the sang only the Old Testament Psalms set to music. That practice continued until late in the seventeenth century among Calvinists and is preserved by some Calvinists down to this day. So there were different attitudes toward the ways in which the actual experience of worship should be changed and reformed, and among the leading reformers, Zwingli clearly took the most extreme position of wanting to purify the churches and to remove music. And in 1525, Zwingli at last introduced a new form for the administration of the Lord s Supper, which he felt was a clearer way of communicating the truth of the Supper and administering it in a way which was in conformity with the Scripture that had gone on before. Zwingli then in many ways moves in a direction toward reform similar to that of Martin Luther. We can see the similarities in terms of the basic concern for the authority of Scripture and for salvation by faith alone, but we also see a somewhat more radical dimension to Zwingli s thought in his approach to the purification of the church. You remember that Luther tended toward the opinion that we should not change any more than is necessary, that only those things which are clearly intolerable should be changed, and Luther was concerned about that for the sake of the weaker brethren and so as not to offend anyone unnecessarily. Zwingli seems to have had a more determined approach to reform that he wanted rather in any way possible to restore the ancient and primitive practice of the church, to remove anything that would be idolatrous or superstitious, and, therefore, to attain as purified a form of worship and church life as possible. Zwingli, like Luther, believed strongly in predestination and stressed the importance of the grace of God in salvation, and this Zwinglian Reformation began to spread beyond the confines of Zurich and to spread especially in the wealthy trading cantons of Switzerland. 5 of 15
Those cantons were cities that were dominant, and the two most important centers of this growth of the Reformation was in the city of Bern, which was becoming in the sixteenth century quite important politically, and in the city of Basel, which had a university and therefore was an important town in the Swiss state as well. In the city of Basel there arose quite a brilliant young reformer who had taken for himself the name Oecolampadius, a rather imposing sort of name, but who was a right-hand man in a lot of ways to Zwingli and shared most of his insights into the need for the reform of the church. Zwingli was a man who was convinced that the Reformation should be advanced by all means possible, and that included any sorts of political alliances that might be necessary for the defense of the faith. Zurich as a city-state had a strong sense of the way in which its religion and its civil life were bound together, and Zwingli from that experience saw the value of Protestants presenting a united front against any opposition that Roman Catholic authorities either in the church or in the state might bring forward, and that led Zwingli into political alliances with other Swiss Protestants and to turn his attention to other Protestants with whom there might be union. The most logical people outside of Switzerland to whom he first turned were those growing Protestant groups in the southern part of Germany, and one with whom he had particular contact then was the reformer of Strasbourg, Martin Bucer. Martin Bucer, who lived from 1491 to 1551, as a young man entered the Dominican order of the church to get an education. He had been educated like Zwingli in largely humanistic studies, and the young Martin Bucer had heard Luther in Heidelberg in 1518 when Heidelberg had hosted Luther for the Heidelberg disputation, and Bucer s response was an enthusiastic one to Luther. He felt that Luther was the fulfillment of the Erasmian ideal, bringing humanist principles to theology as well as to literature, and he had written early to friends of his about how exciting he found Luther s teaching. But like Zwingli, he went on from that initial Erasmian stage to a deeper appreciation of the theological issues involved in the Reformation. By 1520 Martin Bucer had left the monastery, and by 1523 he was formally excommunicated by the church and went to the city of Strasbourg, where he spent much of his life working there to reform the church and to bring the city into a Protestant direction. It s interesting that in the city of Strasbourg for quite a while the city council refused either to support or oppose the Reformation, 6 of 15
and Bucer and others in that city who wanted to preach the Reformation had a rather free hand to do so. By 1525 they had gained enough popular support that the Mass was abolished in several of the parish churches, and by 1529 the city government was brought to suspend the Mass until it could be shown whether it was pleasing to God or not or until a council of the universal church was called. So we can see in the case of Strasbourg and Bucer how the Reformation is beginning to spread from area to area and how different areas are responding, and how, although there are slight differences and sometimes more than slight differences from one Protestant area to another in theology and practice, nonetheless there was a natural unitive bond that they began to feel with one another. And so Zwingli and Bucer began to have contact with one another and to have a sense of common interest and common concern. Zwingli felt that in part because of the opposition that was growing to him in Switzerland, the forest cantons as they were known, the cantons that were more rural and often higher in the mountains in Switzerland, more conservative, were it turned out resisting the advance of Protestantism, and indeed to this day Switzerland tends to be divided between a large Protestant populations near the cities and strong Roman Catholic populations in the more rural sections of Switzerland. That was already true in the sixteenth century and was causing the Roman Catholic cantons to ban together to defend their Roman Catholicism. This political tension in Switzerland and in Germany, the political tension we ve already seen between the emperor Charles as a Catholic emperor and some of the Protestant princes, led many to want to see a stronger political alliance. And so Zwingli and Bucer, along with Philip of Hesse, wanted to pursue any possible strengthened union between themselves and Luther and the Lutheran princes. Luther s reaction was very cautious and indeed rather negative. Luther was skeptical about political alliances. He was skeptical for a couple of reasons. First of all, he was very concerned that Christians not violate Romans 13. He didn t think it very likely that it was right for Protestant princes to resist their emperor. He was hesitant to appear to be in any way resisting the magistrates that God had placed over him, and so Luther was concerned that the Protestants not become too aggressive or too offensive. 7 of 15
Second, Luther was concerned as to the wisdom of political alliances and trying to promote the gospel in a political way. He was concerned that politics would weaken the spiritual thrust of the gospel, and so he felt it was better, as he used to say, just to let the Word do it. He didn t think God needed a lot of human help by political alliances and schemes and compromises, but he thought things would be better off it was allowed for the Word to take its own course and not to be compromised by inappropriate political alliances. There was another concern that Luther particularly had when he came to talking about some kind of alliance with Zurich and with Strasbourg, and that concern related to theology. Luther was convinced that there ought to be no alliances except on the basis of complete theological agreement. And as I think I ve mentioned before, Luther had a sort of domino theory of theology. He felt that if one point of your theology was bad, it was likely to have an effect and an impact on all of your theology. Luther felt, therefore, that if there was something theologically wrong in the position of Zwingli, that theological difference had to be settled before any real alliance in any other areas could take place. As Luther had become aware of Zwingli in the second half of the 1520s, Luther had come to a conclusion that Zwingli was wrong on the issue of the Lord s Supper. Luther was not surprised about that. Luther had thought that anyone like Zwingli who could be friendly toward Karlstadt must have something wrong with him and, in fact, when Luther read what Zwingli had to say about the Lord s Supper, he became even more convinced that the evidence was clear that there was an important theological error in Zwingli s teaching. To try to overcome that suspicion on Luther s part and to try to reach full theological agreement, Bucer and Philip of Hesse arranged a meeting between Zwingli and Luther, and that meeting took place in October 1529 at the city of Marburg in the province of Hesse. That most important and interesting meeting was an opportunity for the two leaders of the Reformation in Switzerland and Germany respectively to meeting, to talk, to find out where they differed and where they agreed, and the hope of Bucer and Philip of Hesse, in particular, and of Zwingli was that a real theological consensus could be reached in order to support a political union as well. 8 of 15
The meeting at Marburg went on for several days. Philip Melanchthon was there as Luther s right-hand man. Martin Bucer was there to try to help Zwingli in that side of the discussions, and regrettably the meeting was unsuccessful in fully resolving the differences. Luther was amazed to find that he had much more in common with Zwingli than he had expected, but they were not able to reach full agreement on the issue of the Lord s Supper, and they parted with real regret. They parted promising not to criticize one another too much publicly, but that proved a difficult promise to keep. They had already engaged in a pamphlet debate back and forth over the Lord s Supper before they met in 1529, and now that disagreement was difficult to keep under wraps. It s hard to tell what might have happened had they had further opportunity to meet and to discuss with one another. There certainly was some movement on Zwingli s part to be more appreciative of Luther s theology, and there was some movement on Luther s part to be more appreciative of Zwingli as a person, but ultimately they couldn t agree, and within two years Zwingli was dead on the battlefield of Switzerland. On October 11, 1531, Zwingli died in what was known as the Second War of Kappel, in which a force of Roman Catholic troops staged a surprise attack on the province of Zurich. The Zurichers were only able to muster a much smaller group of forces to go out and meet the invaders, and Zwingli went with them and was killed in the course of that battle. That had most devastating consequences for the future of the Reformation because with Zwingli dead, the prime players could no longer negotiate with one another, could no longer make progress together, and as Zwingli s successors felt that to honor the memory of their fallen hero they needed to maintain with a good deal of strictness his own theology, and that made things very difficult in Europe and was one of the factors that has led to a divided Protestantism from that time down to this. We ve been talking about how it was the issue of the Lord s Supper that divided Zwingli and Luther and how Bucer was somewhat involved in that, and what I think it would be good for us to do now is to turn to the issue of the Lord s Supper and try to approach it in a somewhat more systematic way to see why it was such an important issue in the sixteenth century and to try to become clearer as to exactly where the battle lines were drawn on this issue. 9 of 15
For us today, at least for many of us today, it seems as if the Lord s Supper is a somewhat peripheral theological issue. It s one that in evangelical Protestantism doesn t seem to occupy a great deal of time and attention in our theologizing, and as we look back on that situation in the sixteenth century, we may be surprised at the importance and centrality of that issue for many people in that day. Indeed, I think it s correct to say that of all of the issues of the sixteenth century in theology, probably the issue of the Lord s Supper was the most controversial and the most divisive. It was the issue that often aroused the greatest emotional response. For many of us when we think about the Reformation, we think about the issue of the authority of Scripture as the only authority in the church as a most important Reformation issue, and we think of justification by faith as a most important Reformation issue. And those were issues, and those were issues that attracted great attention and great concern and great emotional involvement, but neither of those issues was as emotionally charged for most people in the sixteenth century as was the issue of the Lord s Supper. And we have to try imaginatively to get back into that sixteenth century context to understand the reasons why, and when we do that, I think the reasons why become fairly clear. The Lord s Supper was an issue that soon touched the common people very obviously and very immediately. That is to say, the issues of the authority of Scripture and of justification by faith may be seen by some common people as somewhat abstract. They re not, of course, but they might be seen that way. But the minute you begin to change the worship service, the minute you begin to change the way the Mass as an inherited act of worship was conducted, common people were affected. And as we have seen in the case of Wittenberg with Luther and Zurich with Zwingli and Strasbourg with Bucer, the changing of the actual practice of the Mass became a crucial moment in the introduction of the Reformation. Common people had been convinced in the course of the Middle Ages that the Mass, the administration of the Lord s Supper in the Mass, was at the very heart not only of their worship but also of their salvation. Preaching had become somewhat less important in the Middle Ages than it had been in the ancient church, and the actual celebration of the Lord s Supper, therefore, had become more and more important 10 of 15
The very architecture of the churches testified to that, and so you had a great church focusing and culminating in a high raised altar where a priest was thought to minister before God. And not just to minister before God, but to minister in a miraculous way before God so that two great miracles took place upon that altar every time a priest ministered. The first miracle was the miracle of transubstantiation where the bread and the wine were miraculously changed into the very body and blood of Christ, so that from the official teaching of the church, bread and wine were no longer present. They might appear to be present, but they were not actually present. The whole substance of the bread and the whole substance of the wine had been changed into the body and the blood of Christ and only the accidents of what one saw and smelled and touched remained. This kind of distinction was based on the... philosophy which distinguishes between substance and accidents, and so the medieval church declared that a great miracle occurred at the words of institution when by the power the Spirit, the bread and the wine miraculously changed. The second great miracle offered at the altar was the actual sacrifice of Christ, that Christ in some sense was sacrificed anew for the turning away of the wrath of God and for the covering of sins. And since these two great miracles then took place on the altar, the transubstantiation and the sacrifice of Christ anew, that was the very heart of worship, and it was even signaled by the way in which the service went along. When the moment of consecration came, the altar boys would ring altar bells so that everyone in the church would know to look up. This was the central moment when something especially important and divine was happening at the altar and to observe the consecration, and then the priest would hold up the consecrated bread and declare in Latin, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. People were actually, therefore, able to see the consecrated bread which was believed to be Christ Himself. Along with that then the bread was sometimes put on display in the church in a great showcase known as a monstrance, and in that monstrance people could come and worship Christ as He was there present in the church in the bread. And with this theology then the actual reception of the bread and the wine became tremendously important, because it meant you were literally receiving the body and blood of Christ and that that made a difference in you. Christ in you, the hope of glory. Well, Christ was in you by the receiving of bread and wine, and that reality then was tremendously important in the spiritual life of medieval 11 of 15
Christians. They thought they, to use evangelical language, had a personal relationship with Christ; they had that personal relationship through eating His body and drinking His blood. And so at the very heart at the way in which common people experienced the Christian life stood the Mass, and therefore any change there affected their whole perception of Christianity. But it was not only a matter of popular concern because of the way it affected people every time they went to church, but it was also an important matter of theological concern because the issue of the Eucharist had been rather carefully defined by an ecumenical council in the course of the Middle Ages. The Fourth Lateran Council meeting in 1215 not only defined seven sacraments for the church but also declared the doctrine of transubstantiation, so that when reformers came along and challenged that teaching, it was relatively easy for the Roman Catholic Church to respond. They could respond by pointing to an ecumenical council of the church that had met a number of years, indeed centuries earlier, and say, The church has long held to this point of transubstantiation. These Reformers are coming along and rejecting a council of the church in its action. The Reformers, you see, were much stronger in the area of justification. There was no clear teaching by an ecumenical council on justification, and so the Reformers could still argue that issue. It was sort of up for grabs, but when it came to the Lord s Supper, Protestants were in a much weaker position, at least in terms of this issue of the authority of councils because a council had acted and a council had declared that transubstantiation and Eucharistic sacrifice were official doctrines of the church. And so the centrality and the importance of this issue of the Lord s Supper were clear. From the perspective of the early Reformers, not only were they dealing with an issue that was central because of emotional response of people and of the theological judgments of councils, but also they were dealing with an issue that they themselves thought was very important. After all, our Lord, just before His death, had instituted the Lord s Supper. Clearly He thought it was important because He gave such attention to it there in the day before He died for mankind, and the early Reformers thought that one needed to take with full seriousness the fact that our Lord had used very strong language in relation to the Lord s Supper. After all, it was Jesus who said, This is my body, and the Reformers sensed the need to try to clarify, to try to understand faithfully and fully what Jesus meant when He said, This is my body. And so Luther as the leading Reformer had given a fair amount 12 of 15
of attention to that subject, and in due course, Zwingli would also give attention to that subject, and one of the reasons that we want to look at this as a separate issue is because there were some things that Luther and Zwingli agreed upon and indeed all Reformers agreed upon, and other areas among the Reformers where there was disagreement. So let s look at first the agreement that all the Reformers shared in common. First of all, all the Reformers were convinced that Rome had not given enough stress to the importance of faith. Rome in its teaching had come to an understanding of the sacraments that said in effect, As long as you don t oppose the grace that works through the sacraments, you will receive grace. That s what s meant by the Latin phrase ex opera operato, which literally means in effect, by the work it has been worked, and therefore the teaching of the medieval church was that as long as you don t resist the grace of God that comes through the sacraments, that grace will be efficacious and will be productive. The Reformers all felt that this sort of negative approach was not adequate, that in fact more than that negative position needed to be affirmed. The Reformers wanted to say, No, to receive the benefits of the sacrament, you must receive the sacrament by faith. Faith is important in the sacraments. If we do not come in faith, if we do not come with trust, if we do not come with belief in God and in His promises and in His Christ, then we really will receive no blessing in the sacrament. And so although the Reformers may have differed and did differ on how objectively present Christ was in the bread and the wine, they were agreed that ultimately no blessing comes to individuals unless what is received is received in faith. Second, all of the Reformers agreed in rejecting the doctrine of Eucharistic sacrifice. The Eucharistic sacrifice was judged to be a primary error of the Roman Catholic medieval teaching. The Reformers all said that the Eucharist is not something we offer to God but that God offers to us. We are not doing a good work to please God, but He in His mercy is offering us something to help and to aid us, so the doctrine of Eucharistic sacrifice was universally rejected by the Reformers. Also, the doctrine of transubstantiation was rejected. All the Reformers agreed that what happens on the altar is not a miracle of changing bread and wine completely into the body and the blood of Christ, and certainly they all agreed, therefore, that Christ 13 of 15
should not be worshipped as if the bread were His own body. The Reformers were all agreed that those perspectives on the Lord s Supper were errors from the medieval church that needed to be rejected. But when it came to a positive statement of belief, then we begin to see some differences among the Reformers, and part of that difference comes, I think, from differing perspectives that the Reformers came to their work with. For Luther, the heart and core of his religious discovery was the great truth that we are saved not by our work but by God s work, that it is not our works of righteousness that will save us but God s work of righteousness in Christ that will save us, and that great central truth influenced Luther in almost all that he wrote and believed, and it influenced him also then when he came to the Lord s Supper. Because when Luther came to the Lord s Supper and tried to evaluate the inherited medieval teaching on that subject, Luther saw the central error of Rome as being the doctrine of Eucharistic sacrifice. Luther said, What does the doctrine of Eucharistic sacrifice really teach? It teaches that we by bringing bread and wine and by going through certain rituals offer Christ again to God and that by our offering, God is pleased with us and blesses us. Luther said, The doctrine of Eucharistic sacrifice is just another way of talking about works righteousness. It s just another way of saying that we re going to earn something fom God. And Luther wanted to reject that. He wanted to reject that absolutely, and so he said, We must reject any notion that the Lord s Supper is something we do to please God. Rather, he said, We must understand the Lord s Supper as what God does for us. We don t give something to God; He gives something to us. And, therefore, for Luther the key to the Lord s Supper was the idea that God in this sacrament gives us a gift, and the gift that He gives us, Luther said, is Christ Himself. God knows that we are weak; God knows that we need support in our faith. God knows that we need to be strengthened, and so God in His mercy has given the church sacraments, and the church, therefore, in the sacramental promise of God receives Christ Himself. And therefore Luther said, Christ is present in, with, and under the bread and wine. And Luther went on to say, When we receive the bread and wine, we literally receive Christ. We literally receive the body and blood of Christ. And Luther said, This isn t transubstantiation, but it is an elaboration of what is in the promise of God. Some theologians have called this consubstantiation, that the substance of the body 14 of 15
of Christ is received with the substance of the bread. Luther never used that word and a lot of Lutheran theologians don t like that word, but that s one way of expressing this idea that God along with the bread and in the bread and under the form of the bread actually gives us the body and blood of Christ to build us up in the faith and in commitment. And so Luther wants to be sure that as we approach the doctrine of the Lord s Supper, we re doing so from the perspective of saying that the Lord s Supper is God s gift to us. It is not in any sense our work, and so we receive the mercy of Christ in the Supper in the same way that we receive our salvation, by faith in what God has promised. We ll carry on this theme in the next lecture. Christ-Centered Learning Anytime, Anywhere 15 of 15