The Lord's Supper in the Theology of Martin Chemnitz Bjarne - Logia

The Consecration | 0
Lutheran. The Sacramentarians had objected that the Luther an doctrine
of the consecration as enunciated in the Formula of Concord was
papistic. But in view of the foregoing exposition of the Lutheran position,
Chemnitz, Selneccer, and Kirchner are justified in exclaiming in
the Apologia, “Come, come now, gentlemen. The Christian Concordia
goes no farther than the correct use instituted by Christ” (see p. 86).
234 The difference between the Roman and Lutheran positions immediately
becomes clear when one considers Chemnitz’s analysis of
the Tridentine statements concerning Holy Orders at the 23rd session
(July 15, 1563). After stating positively that there was “given to
the Apostles and their successors in the priesthood for consecrating,
offering, and administering the body and blood, also for remitting
and retaining sins,” Trent in Canon 1 declares that “if anyone says that
there is not in the New Testament a visible and external priesthood,
or there is no power of consecrating [non esse potestatem aliquam consecrandi]
and offering the body and blood of the Lord, and of remitting
and retaining sins, but only an office and bare ministry of preaching
the Gospel, or that those who do not preach are not priests at all, let
him be anathema” (Ex. 2, 677).
235 To this Chemnitz answers that the “Anabaptists and Enthusiasts
are rightly reproved” who regard the external ministry of the Word
as useless and unnecessary (Ex. 2, 677). But this is not to say that
God did not institute the office of the Public Ministry; rather “God
arranged by a certain counsel of His that He wills to dispense these
things . . . through the outward ministry of the Word. This ministry
He did not commit to angels, so that their appearances are to be
sought and expected, but He put the Word of reconciliation into men,
and He wills that the proclamation of the Gospel, divinely revealed,
should sound forth through them” (Ex. 2, 678).
236 Chemnitz then puts together his chief objection to Trent in one
brief paragraph so that here the difference between the “Lutheran”
and “Roman” consecration can be easily discerned:
But there is no obscurity about what they want and seek, For in this
first Canon they say expressly that by that priesthood for which they are
contending they do not understand the office and ministry of preaching
the Gospel, but declare in the first chapter that they are fighting in behalf
of the sacrifice of the Mass, about their external and visible priesthood,
which they define as being chiefly the power of sacrificing Christ in the
Mass. And they think that such a priesthood is necessary in order that the