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

lood. So absolutely necessary to his new theory does Kahnis see the
shedding of the wine to be, that he goes completely out of the sacred
record to assume that "the wine which is poured out of a large vessel into
the chalice is the blood which is shed for us." This is not interpreting
Scripture, but manufacturing it--and the manufactured Scripture directly
contradicts the inspired Scripture. It is the cup of blessing which we bless,
not the cup of wine already poured and consecrated in the Supper, not the
skin-bottle of pouring which we pour before the Supper, which is the
communion of the blood of Christ. It is not enough for Kahnis to add to St.
Paul; he feels himself forced to contradict him. But Kahnis is helpless. If
the bread comes into the Supper solely to be eaten, and the breaking is but
a natural mean toward the eating, a mean which can be used either before
the Supper or in it; if the wine comes into the Supper solely to be drunken,
and the pouring is but a natural mean toward the drinking, a mean which
can be used before or in it, Kahnis's theory of symbol goes by the board.
On the very word, then, on which the critic builds his whole theory, it
goes to pieces. It is broken by "broken." Alike what the four narratives say,
and what they omit, is decisive against him--as their words and their
omissions strengthen the true view, the view of our Church.
VII. Summary of the false theory.
The critic, as we have seen, formally abandons in great stress, in one
important respect, the Zwinglian view of the meaning of the word "is" in
the Lord's Supper. He acknowledges that here it does not mean
"symbolizes, represents." This he does, apparently, to avoid the rock on
which we showed, and have again shown, that the old rationalistic
symbolic theory struck and split, as soon as it was launched. He concedes
that the bread, as such, is not the symbol of the body of Christ. So much
for Zwinglianism. But, as he goes on to admit, there is a solitary point not
peculiar to bread, in which there is a likeness to a solitary point, connected
with the history of our Saviour's body, but not peculiar to it. His theory
really is this: The bread does not here mean bread, but the breaking of the
bread. The body of Christ does not mean His body, but the breaking of His
body. The critic, with his