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

The Consecration |
churches as adherents of the Augsburg Confession” (SD VII, 111). 73
Why doesn’t this antithesis, so obviously intended against the Papists,
appear somewhere in SD VII, 108–110, instead of in SD VII,
126? Could it be possible that Chemnitz and his fellow theologians
who almost invariably present their thoughts in a logical and coherent
manner, here had a lapsus, a slip of the pen?
300 This oddity prompts one to take a closer look at what the statement
actually says and to see why it is placed where it is. It is obvious that it
rejects the teaching that the “visible forms of the blessed bread” are to
be adored. Chemnitz, as well as the other true Lutherans, taught that
after the consecration the body and blood of Christ are present but
the bread and the wine also remain. There is a sacramental union between
the earthly and the heavenly elements (see p. 45 f.). And, as has
already been noted (see p. 113), Chemnitz makes the true Lutheran
position clear, namely, that the “substance or form of the element of
bread and wine should not be worshiped, lest beside the Creator, we
worship also the creature” (Ex. 2, 280).
301 Scrutinizing again the second part of SD VII, 126, one immediately
notices that the following words have a familiar ring, “Of course,
no one except an Arian heretic can or will deny that Christ Himself,
true God and Man, who is truly and essentially present in the
Supper when it is rightly used, should be adored in spirit and truth
in all places but especially where his community is assembled” (SD
VII, 126b). This material is taken from Chemnitz’s Examination II,
(pp. 277–281), and it has been telescoped into this one sentence (see
p. 103 f.). It is almost identical with Chemnitz’s closing words on what
is “not in controversy,” “no one, therefore, denies that Christ, God
and Man, truly and substantially present in His divine and human
nature in the action of the Lord’s Supper, should be worshiped in
spirit and in truth, except someone who, with the Sacramentarians,
either denies or harbors doubt concerning the presence of Christ in
the Supper” (Ex. 2, 279).
302 What the antithesis (SD VII, 126), placed as it is among the Sacramentarian
antitheses, does do is to reject the Sacramentarian
charge that the true Lutherans were guilty of artolatry. If one denied,
as the Melanchthonians did (see p. 83), that the consecration
effected the Real Presence and still venerated the sacrament, then
such a one would indeed be guilty of artolatry. This is a charge that