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

0 | The Lord’s Supper
is truly a life-giving food and His blood truly a quickening beverage, as
the 200 fathers of the Council of Ephesus attested when they stated
that Christ’s flesh is a life-giving flesh, whence only this man and no
other human being in heaven and on earth can say truthfully, “Where
two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them,”
likewise,“I am with you always, even to the close of the age.” We do not
understand these testimonies to mean that only the deity of Christ is
present with us in the Christian church and community and that this
presence of Christ in no way involves His humanity. (SD VIII, 76, 77).
395 The power of the body of Christ is not limited to the souls of the
believers. The Large Catechism urges “that we must never regard the
sacrament as a harmful thing from which we should flee, but as a pure,
wholesome, soothing medicine which aids and quickens us in both
soul and body. For where the soul is healed, the body has benefited
also” (LC V, 68; emphasis added). Chemnitz and Andreae underlined
this truth in the “Catalog of Testimonies,” when they quote Canon 11
of the Council of Ephesus, “If anyone does not confess that the flesh
of the Lord is quickening, because it was made the Word’s own, who
quickened all things, let him be anathema” (Trig. 1129).
396 The theme that the Lord’s Supper is also the “medicine of immortality”
constantly runs through Chemnitz’s exposition of the benefits
of the sacrament. Here he first of all is treading in the steps of Luther
who confessed:
lrenaeus and the ancient fathers pointed out the benefit that our body
is fed with the body of Christ, in order that our faith and hope may abide
and that our body also may live eternally from the same eternal food of the
body of Christ which it eats physically. This is a bodily benefit, nevertheless
an extraordinarily great one, and it follows from the spiritual benefit. For
Christ surely will make even our body eternal, alive, blessed, and glorious,
which is a much greater thing than giving us His body to eat for a short
time on earth. Therefore He wills to be “in us by nature,” says Hilary, in
both our soul and body, according to the Word in John 6 [:56], “He who
eats me abides in me and I in him.” If we eat Him spiritually through the
Word He abides in us spiritually in our souls; if one eats Him physically
He abides in us physically and we in Him. As we eat Him, He abides in us
and we in Him. For He is not digested or transformed but ceaselessly He
transforms us, our soul into righteousness, our body into immortality. So
the ancient fathers spoke of the physical eating. (LW 37, 132).
397 Chemnitz follows Luther. The Savior’s words clearly teach us that
“the physical mouths of those who eat in the Lord’s Supper are not
eating common or plain bread when they receive the bread, but the