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

proposition, This is My body (My blood), the subject is not bread (wine).
When the determination of the subject is involved, it is decided upon the
one hand by the connection, on the other, by the predicate. The
connection demands as subject bread (wine), as predicate, body (blood);
and in this way the exposition found itself directed to the supposition of an
internal connection of bread and body, and of wine and blood, in which
the predicate gives prominence to the chief substance. Thus the physician,
in giving an essence in water, says: This is a cordial. The 'this,' in such a
sentence, is 'essence and water,' the predicate is the chief substance. When
Christ says, ‘My words are spirit and life,' from words as the subject,
which are partly spirit, partly letter, He educes the essential substance.
This mode of speech, to which Luther gives the name Synecdoche, is, in
itself, admissible. The only question to be raised is, Is it admissible here?
To a renewed investigation which we have given the subject, on the
principle 'day teacheth unto day,' the difficulties connected with this view
have presented themselves with increasing force. According to the
connection, the 'this' is that which Jesus took, brake, gave them to eat, that
is, the bread. In the case of the cup, the subject is expressly specified as
'this cup.' Now cup (chalice), by the familiar metonomy 'container for
thing contained,' stands for that which it contains. But what the chalice
contains is wine. Christ does not say, 'That which ye now eat is My body,
that which ye now drink is My blood, but that which I give you to eat and
drink,' consequently is such in advance of the eating and drinking. The
poteerion is the drink, as it was in the chalice before the disciples drank.
But before the eating and drinking it is still, according to the Lutheran
doctrine, bread and wine, not the body and blood of Christ. But that
poteerion means the wine. Yet undrunken is affirmed in Paul's exposition
(1 Cor. x. 16): 'The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the
communion of the blood of Christ? the bread which we break, is it not the
communion of the body of Christ?' in which, beyond doubt, the bread, as
broken for eating, the cup, as blessed for drinking, is called the
communion. That which places us in communion