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

| The Lord’s Supper
268 Chemnitz’s exposition similarly centers around these two points:
faith and one’s outward confession of that faith that Jesus Christ, true
God and Man, is present, go together. When Jacob, Moses, and Elijah
“were sure that God was truly present under these external and visible
signs,” and that He there revealed “Himself by a peculiar mode of
grace, they certainly worshiped that God whom they believed present
there” (Ex. 2, 277). As a result of faith “invocation and worship followed.”
As a matter of fact, if it had not, it would not “have been true
faith” (Ex. 2, 277).
269 In The Two Natures of Christ, Chemnitz has a chapter on “The Worship
of the Two Natures” (TNC 411–422). Throughout this chapter
he, just as Luther, links “faith and worship” (TNC 412). More specifically
Chemnitz notes that some of the Sophists in the Middle Ages
had argued that worship (latria) could be applied to the divine nature
of Christ but only bond service (hyperdulia) to the human nature.
Chemnitz is determined not to permit this error to exist in the church
of the Reformation. Others had said that they could give worship (latria)
to Christ, just as they would honor a king and his crown, but the
latter only incidentally, as they honor the crown as a representative of
the royal prerogatives. In answer Chemnitz exclaims, “Surely the ears
of pious men recoil when someone says that faith and worship apply
to the human nature only by association” (TNC 412). And further,
“Thomas certainly would not subscribe to this new wisdom when he
says of the wound which Christ had received, ‘My Lord and my God’
[John 20:28]” (TNC 413).
270 In view of the position of some of the Sophists and the Sacramentarians’
insistence that Christ’s body must be kept in heaven, it is no
wonder that Chemnitz makes his points against the Arian, Nestorian,
and Sacramentarian positions (see p. 103), and declares that “.
these things needed to be said lest someone should suspect that we
called into doubt whether Christ, God and Man, who is present in the
action of the Supper should be worshiped” (Ex. 2, 279).
271 Throughout all his writings Chemnitz asserts that the orthodox
antiquity accepted the personal union of the two natures of Christ,
the special modes of Christ’s presence, and the creative power of the
Words of Institution when spoken at the command of Christ. There
could be no question for him that if one accepts these truths, an external
adoration of the sacrament could follow because these truths