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

| The Lord’s Supper
He does not discuss this point in any greater detail with the Papalists
because, as he says, “I have in a small book explained the grounds
for this conviction more fully, I shall add nothing here” (Ex 2, 327).
10 What is significant about the analysis of Chemnitz of the Sacrament
of the Eucharist in the Examination is the precise line he draws
between the Lutherans and the Romanists. He does not think it is
necessary that in debating with them the “whole treatment of the
controversy [i.e., the Real Presence] should be repeated here. . . . I
am one in confession with those churches which differ from the Sacramentarians”
(Ex 2, 223). Yet he devotes about twenty pages to the
rejection of transubstantiation. Both he and the Romanists agree
that the bread and cup become sacramental by a certain consecration
(Ex 2, 225), but he disagrees with them when they “patch human
traditions into the Word of God” as in the Canon of the Mass (Ex 2,
230). And when he comes to examine “the cult and veneration to be
shown this most holy sacrament, “he is willing to say that” a number
of things are not in controversy; these I willingly concede” (Ex 2,
277). And yet there are several points on which he must disagree with
them (Ex 2, 279). The common-sense clear writing of Chemnitz is a
healthy antidote against the excesses of some simplistic high-church
liturgically minded as well as against the excesses of the anti-liturgically
minded.
11 The Two Natures in Christ was first published in 1578, after the
Formula of Concord had been completed and while the “Preface
to the Book of Concord” for the 1580 publication of the entire Book
of Concord was in the making. Since Two Natures was expanded
from a much smaller book with the same title published in 1570, the
massive research material which Chemnitz had gathered and digested
was available for the Lutheran theologians to use. This work
makes an important contribution to the proper understanding of the
Sacrament of the Altar. But from the outset it must be understood
that neither Luther nor Chemnitz suggests that the debate over the
Lord’s Supper can be resolved by means of the Christological truths.
Luther writes in the Great Confession (1528 ) that he had in the previous
year (That These Words Still Stand Fast ) demonstrated that it
was not contrary to Scripture nor to the Articles of Faith for Christ’s
body to be at the same time in heaven and in the Supper (LW 37, 55,
64), but he had done this only “to show at least one way how God