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

Sacrament |
3. “That it be instituted or commanded in the New Testament;
4. “That it be instituted, not for a time only, but to the end of the world as it
is written of Baptism, and until the Son of God returns to judgment, as
St. Paul says of the Eucharist. These things are required for the element
or sign of the New Testament;
5. “There is required for a sacrament a divine promise concerning the
grace, effect, or fruit of the sacrament;
6. “This promise must not simply, nakedly, and in itself have a testimony in
the Word of God, but it is necessary that it be joined to the sign of the
sacrament by divine ordination, and so be clothed with it;
7. “This promise must not pertain to any and all gifts of God, spiritual or
temporal, but it must be the promise of grace, or of justification, that is,
of the gratuitous reconciliation, of the remission of sins, and, in sum, of
the entire benefit of redemption;
8. “And this promise in the sacraments is not merely either signified or
announced in general, but by the power of God it is offered, displayed,
applied, and sealed also to the individuals who use the Sacraments in
faith.” (Ex 2, 38 f.)
26 It is quite apparent that Chemnitz has compressed an enormous
amount of material into these eight theses so that they will eliminate
from both the Roman and the Reformed systems much that is
wrongly taught and practiced with respect to the sacraments. But one
should in no sense conclude from these eight points that Chemnitz
proceeds as though Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are as identical in
virtually every respect as are Tweedledum and Tweedledee. For he asserts
that “each individual sacrament has its own proper and peculiar
word of definition, which in a sense is its form. There the sacrament or
mystery of the Lord’s Supper is safely, rightly, and in fact understood
and evaluated on no other basis than that word or definition and according
to that word which is its own proper and peculiar form . . . .
The Son of God has put His Word by which He has given us the
sacraments into opposition to our thoughts and has willed to do so in
such a way so that we must learn from His Word whatever we need to
know about these mysteries and must oppose all the absurdities that
can be raised in objection to His Word, because He who is true, wise,
and powerful has spoken it” (LS 87 f.).
27 As Chemnitz has noted, the Roman sacramental system with its
seven sacraments has fallen far short of the Scriptural standards
which he distilled for judging the sacraments. But the Sacramentarians,
too, misused Biblical material, especially to destroy the Sacrament
of the Altar as the Savior had instituted it. They did not want to