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

Apology, the Small and Large Catechisms, the Smalcald Articles and the
Tractate, and with a flood of patristic evidence to show that here was no new
doctrine, but a “we believe, teach and confess” to the faith once delivered to
the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, which the Lord creates and
sustains by the gifts he gives through his Means of Grace.
The Book of Concord’s confession of the Lord’s Law and Gospel is so
destructive of the world’s religions that it is ever under attack both blatant
and subtle, with the latter ever the more sinister. Does it have to be so clear
and blunt? Is that what the Lord really said? No chance for any synergism?
Bluntness as proof of faithfulness was not the way of Chemnitz. Bjarne
Teigen remarks “his faculty for presenting with objectivity not only the
content of Sacred Scriptures but also the views of theologians, friendly and
otherwise” and eager to recognize “a number of things not in controversy.
These I willingly concede” (ix).
The Formula first confesses the Lord’s Supper, and then the Lord whom
the Lord’s Supper confesses, Articles 7 and 8: a sacramental Christology.
Of what use is a salvation achieved for us, if it is not delivered to us? The
salvation, achieved by the vicarious atoning sacrifice of his body and blood,
is given us as the Lord gives into our mouths his body and blood to eat and
to drink, as he says. There is no other Savior. “Lutheran theology is sacramental
theology.”
On then to Chemnitz: “There and back again.”
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Supper in the Theology of Martin Chemnitz is not a photographic reproduction
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Erling T. Teigen
xii