The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

express and sole purpose of comparing the conflicting views of Zwinglians
and Lutherans, not a word is said of a reception “by the mouth." The same
is true of the Wittenberg Concord, drawn up with like aims. The fact is,
therefore, that the defining term "by the mouth," cannot be demonstrated to
be an essential part of the Lutheran Confessional statement. Entire national
bodies of Lutherans have existed for centuries, and now exist, who have no
such expression in their Confessions.
It is true that the Formula of Concord, which appeared thirty-four
years after Luther's death, does use and defend the term, and that this
Formula, not without good reason, has been generally received in the
Germanic Churches, and either formally or virtually by an immense
majority of all our Churches, and that it is confessedly a just and noble
scientific development of the Lutheran faith. But when the Formula and
our theologians speak of a reception by the mouth, they speak, as we may,
of the reception of the Holy Spirit in, with, and under the preached Word,
by the ear, not meaning at all that there is, or can be, a physical grasping of
the Holy Spirit by the organ of sense, but that the Word is the medium,
through which His presence is operative, and that the Word, and by Divine
appointment, the Holy Spirit, in, with, and under the Word, is received by
the soul through the ear. Our Gerhard, of whom the Professor of Franklin
and Marshall College is almost a namesake, defines the words in question
in this way: "The sacramental eating of the body of Christ is none other
than with the mouth to receive the eucharistic 'bread, which is the
communion of the body of Christ,' (1 Cor. x. 16). This sacramental eating
is said to be spiritual., because the body of Christ is not eaten naturally,
and because the mode of eating, like the presence itself, is neither natural,
carnal, physical, nor local, but supernatural, divine, mystical, heavenly, and
spiritual...The Word of God is the food of the soul, and yet is received by
the bodily ear." If, indeed, there be such a thing as a Sacrament, a
something distinct from language, as means of grace, it must be received in
some other way than by hearing, or sight, or in the mode in which