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

The Consecration |
traditional term also in German and Danish. As a matter of fact, a few days after he wrote
to Wolferinus (Aug. 5, 1543), Luther in a letter to Hermann Bonn, rector in Lubeck, uses
Pater Noster for the Lord’s Prayer (DeWette 5, 580). It is an exaggeration to state that since
Cyprian, the phrase oratio dominica has been wedded to the prayer which Jesus taught His
disciples.
The word dominica obviously refers to the Lord Jesus Christ. The term oratio can
designate not only prayers of the Lord, but also words, speeches, etc. dominica simply
identifies the person behind the oratio. Any ordinary Latin dictionary gives the information
that the most common meaning of oratio is“speaking, speech, discourse, language.” It is also
evident that this meaning carried over into medieval Latin. Hardt quotes from De Ferrari-
Berry, A Lexicon of Thomas Aquinas, “Oratio: (1) speech . . . (2) Speech of sentence . . . (3)
Prayer” (p. 230; see note #1). Hardt also shows from the Bekenntnisschriften (p. 471, note
#1) that Melanchthon used the term oratio in its common meaning of discourse, Oratio de
Pontificum Romanorum Ambitione Tyrannide, 1556.
More specifically to the point, the word oratio is frequently used for the Words of
Institution. Luther himself used it in this sense in the 1528 letter to Carlstadt (W A Br
4, 367). Gabriel Biel uses oratio in this sense in his Exposition of the Canon of the Mass
(edited by Heiko Oberman, Wiesbaden, 1969, p. 239 f.). In at least nine places in two pages
he refers to the Verba with some form of oratio. Luther was trained at the University of
Erfurt, where one of the faculty members, Bartholomaeus von Usingen, was a “disciple
of Biel, teacher of Luther” (Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology, p. 118). Luther
was well acquainted with Biel’s Exposition of the Canon of the Mass. There are, as a matter
of fact, parallels in the Wolferinus correspondence and Biel’s Exposition. Most striking is
Luther’s use of the term prolatio. Biel wrote, Post prolationem huius oration is, referring to
the Verba; Luther employs the expression post prolationem verborum (“after the speaking
of the words”), referring to the Verba.
J. A. O. Preus in his translation of Chemnitz’s The Lord’s Supper twice translates the word
oratio with the word “language,” where the matter under discussion is “the interpretation of
the Words of Institution” (LS 137).
All this is overpowering evidence for translating the phrase in the Wolferinus letter with
the words,“from the beginning of the Word of the Lord.” It need not refer to any particular
syllable or word, as Luther has written to Carlstadt in 1528, but it can very well refer to the
first part of the consecration, since Luther believes that this achieves the Real Presence.
The Sacrament is a reality already from the first part of the consecration. In “The German
Mass” he suggests that after the consecration of the bread, it be distributed before the cup
is consecrated (LW 53, 81).