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

0 | The Lord’s Supper
vain, in Art. 16 calls the Eucharist a venerable and adorable sacrament”
(Ex. 2, 278). 71
283 Chemnitz’s final quotation is drawn from Luther’s Commentary on
Genesis (1535). Luther observes on Genesis 47:31 (“And Israel bowed
himself upon the bed’s head.”):
Not only when we pray, but also when we baptize, absolve, and receive
absolution, and when we approach the holy Supper, yes, also when the
promise or the text of the Gospel is recited, we ought to bow our knees
or at least stand as a sign of adoration or of reverence and thankfulness.
And even if in the Lord’s Supper nothing else were offered except bread
and wine, as the Sacramentarians blaspheme, nevertheless in the Supper
the promise is there, and the divine voice, and the Holy Spirit through
the Word. Therefore it is fitting that we should approach it reverently, but
how much more fitting it is that this be done when we believe that the
true body and blood is there with the Word. (Ex. 2, 278; see LW 8, 144).
284 Chemnitz, together with his fellow confessors of the Book of Concord,
has put himself squarely in the doctrine and practice of the Gnesio-Lutherans,
Martin Luther, and the Early Church. He has done
so because he accepts all the implications of the Scriptures regarding
the personal union of the two natures in the one person Jesus Christ.
This means that also the human nature is worthy of divine adoration,
as the church sings in the Te Deum (“Thine Adorable True and
Only Son”). He, further, accepts the Scriptural evidence that the resurrected
Christ has and employs several modes of presence, including
the definitive mode (SD VII, 100). This for Chemnitz means that
Christ’s presence “in the Supper with the bread and wine” is to be
distinguished from His presence “in the whole church” (TNC 448 f.),
where Christ dwells in the heart by faith. And, finally, Chemnitz accepts
the doctrine that Christ effects the miracle of the presence when
He speaks through the mouth of the officiant (Ex. 2, 229).
the Difference Between the Lutherans and
the romanists on the veneration
285 But there are differences between the Lutherans and the Papists.
Chemnitz classifies them under three heads.
286 First, the Roman Church had in the last 300 years invented transubstantiation
and hence demanded, as Chemnitz says, that “the
whole of that which was instituted by Christ that it might be received,
should be adored with the cult of Latria” (Ex. 2, 279). But Chemnitz