05-4 Theology of the..

56 LOGIA
the Spirit The Lima Text on Baptism and Some Recent English
Language Baptismal Liturgies,” Georg Kretschmar’s “Recent
Research on Christian Initiation,” and Maxwell Johnson’s “From
Three Weeks to Forty Days: Baptismal Preparation and the Origins
of Lent.” Living Water, Sealing Spirit is must reading for
those who desire to understand the theological rootage of the
Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RICA).
A Commentary on 1 Peter. By Leonard Goppelt. Translated by John
E. Alsup. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993. Hardcover. 385 pages.
■ English-speaking readers have been familiar with Munich’s
Leonard Goppelt through his Apostolic and Post-Apostolic Times,
Theology of the New Testament, and Typos. Now his commentary
on 1 Peter, first published in German in 1978, is available in English.
Goppelt sees 1 Peter as an epistle written in the Apostle
Peter’s name to address “eschatological existence in the context
of living as foreigners and accepting duties within the institutions
of society” (20). The reader need not agree with all of Goppelt’s
isagogical assumptions to benefit from his many rich
exegetical insights into 1 Peter.
Liturgy in Dialogue: Essays in Memory of Ronald Jasper. Edited
by Paul Bradshaw and Bryan Spinks. Collegeville, Minnesota:
The Liturgical Press, 1993. Paper. 227 pages.
■ This volume contains contributions by eleven scholars in
memory of the late Anglican liturgist and architect of the Alternate
Service Book (1980), Ronald Jasper. As the title indicates,
most of the chapters center on “liturgy in dialogue” with theology,
culture, ceremonial, ethics, technology, ecumenism, history,
language, society, and other disciplines. Bryan Spinks provides
a very helpful introduction to the connection between
liturgy and culture in his essay “Liturgy and Culture: Is Modern
Liturgical Revision a Case of Not Seeing the Wood for the
Trees” Spinks concludes: “It is my contention, therefore that
the crisis Western liturgists allege exists in the modern liturgies
is more a problem of perspective than failure to interact with
culture. If anything, the problem is to guard against the modern
liturgies being just a religious gloss on developing Western
culture . ... If there is a crisis, the fault is probably not that the
liturgies are not modern, but possibly because, in affirming
culture, they have obscured the mystery and transcendence of
God” (49).
Lights in the Darkness: Forerunners of the Liturgical Movement.
By J. D. Crichton. Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press,
1996. Paper. 176 pages.
■ An overview of post-Reformation precursors of the Liturgical
Movement, which came to culmination in the reforms of Vatican
II. The final chapter is a concise history of the Liturgical
Movement from 1909–1962.
JTP
PREVIEW
Actio Sacramentalis—Die Verwaltung des Heiligen Abendmahles
nach den Prinzipien Martin Luthers in der Zeit bis zur Konkordienformel.
Luth. Verlagsbuchhandlung Groß Oesingen, 1996.
(Distributed by Jürgen Diestelmann, Thunstr. 19 C, D- 38110
Braunschweig.)
■ Preliminary Remarks: Since 1954 I have been engaged in
studying the doctrine of consecration of the Lord’s Supper by
Luther 1 and the Lutheran Theology in the sixteenth century. At
this opportunity I was able to collect quite a lot of archive material,
hitherto hardly known. During my increasing activity as an
active pastor I was unable to utilize the material. However when
becoming a pensioner I could continue and finish this substantial
work just in time for the “Luther-Jahr 1996,” when the book Actio
Sacramentalis was issued. 2
1. “Sic ergo definiemus tempus vel actionem sacramentalem, ut
incipiat ab initio orationis dominicae, et duret donec omnes
communicaverint, calicem ebiberint, particulas comederint, populus
dimissus et ab altari discessum sit.” 3 With these words Luther
gave in 1543—in a letter addressed to the Eislebian Pastor Simon
Wolferinus 4 —a definition of the actio sacramentalis, the action
that Christ instituted “in the night he was betrayed” (1 Cor 11:23)
as the Lord’s Supper.
2. There is a definition of the actio sacramentalis in the Formula
of Concord too: “und heißet allhie usus oder actio, das ist
Gebrauch oder Handlung, fürnehmblich nicht den Glauben,
auch nicht allein die mündliche Nießung, sondern die ganze
äußerliche, sichtbare, von Christo geordnete Handlung des
Abendmahls, die Consecration oder Wort der Einsetzung, die
Austeilung und Empfahung oder mündliche Nießung des gesegneten
Brots und Weins, Leibs und Bluts Christi.” 5
3. Both definitions refer to the formula “Nihil habet rationem
sacramenti extra usum a Christo institutum” bzw. “extra actionem
divinitus institutam.” 6 In the Formula of Concord it is marked as a
“useful rule and guide” (nützliche Regel und Richtschnur). Therefore
it is constituted as an important norm for the doctrine of the
Lord’s Supper.
4. Bjarne W. Teigen in 1991 has examined the importance of this
so-called “Nihil Rule,” 7 which is particularly mentioned in the
Formula of Concord (SD VII, 73), because misunderstandings and
dissensions had arisen among some teachers of the Augsburg
Confession (“Meinungsverschiedenheiten zwischen einigen
Lehrern des Augsburgischen Bekenntnisses”) 8 on this common
rule. In his essay he emphasizes: “It is the thesis of this paper that
one can determine quite precisely what the Fathers of the Formula
meant in SD VII, 73–90.” Also E. F. Peters 9 had been engaged in
explaining this rule and added various references in a dissertation.
5. There was a space of three decades between the definitions
under 1 und 2 mentioned, in which various dissensions of the