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

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theory of pronouns, gets the proposition: This bread (touto artos) is my<br />

body. <strong>The</strong>n, with his theory of the substantive verb, this is made to mean:<br />

This bread is like my body; then, with the new theory of metaphor, bread<br />

means breaking of bread; body means breaking of body; <strong>and</strong> the sacred<br />

words mean this: This breaking of bread is like the breaking of my body<br />

broken for you, therefore take this breaking of bread <strong>and</strong> eat it. He<br />

ab<strong>and</strong>ons the argument on which the faith of our Church was originally<br />

assailed, <strong>and</strong> admits the untenableness of the philology of the anti-<br />

Lutheran rationalism of centuries.<br />

VIII. <strong>The</strong> false theory characterized.<br />

Strange fallacy, which would make the breaking of anything,<br />

whatsoever, a title to its being called the Lord's body, which assumes that<br />

the bread as such, that is, as food, is not the symbol of Christ's body, but<br />

that the breaking of the bread is like the breaking of the body. This theory<br />

assumes that it would be as proper to affirm that a broken paving - stone,<br />

or a broken pane of glass, or a broken dish, or a broken rope, is Christ's<br />

body, as that the bread of His supper is; for the parallel is between<br />

breaking <strong>and</strong> breaking--broken bread <strong>and</strong> broken body. But if you<br />

concede that it is between bread <strong>and</strong> body, then you are drawn to the<br />

dreaded necessity of the true supernatural eating of the latter as the parallel<br />

to the true natural eating of the former. How pointless, too, opening in the<br />

lowest depth of Rationalism itself, a lower deep, is it to say that the<br />

breaking of bread is like the breaking of Christ's body, considering the<br />

breaking as the means of putting that sacred body to death. Bread is an<br />

inanimate thing: how can breaking it be like the putting of a human being<br />

to death? Breaking bread is the very symbol of quiet <strong>and</strong> peace. Who<br />

would dream of it as an appropriate symbol of the most cruel <strong>and</strong><br />

ignominious death? Bread is the representative food, <strong>and</strong>, used in<br />

metaphor, is the symbol of spiritual or supernatural food. <strong>The</strong> breaking of<br />

bread is the means to giving it as food, <strong>and</strong> taking it as food, <strong>and</strong> as a<br />

symbol, the symbol of giving <strong>and</strong> taking a higher food. No one would<br />

dream of the breaking of a piece of bread as the symbol of killing a human<br />

body; <strong>and</strong> if so extraordinary a symbolic use of it were made, it would<br />

require the most explicit statement, on

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