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

| The Lord’s Supper
in Galatians 1:8, ‘Even if an angel from heaven should preach to you a
gospel contrary to that which we preach to you, let him be accursed’”
(Ep., Rule and Norm, 1).
41 Chemnitz was determined to teach no more and no less than what
the sacred Scriptures taught. He treads a very precise but firm line.
He does not want to be drawn into arguments concerning classifications
and terminology if these cannot be drawn from the Scriptures.
For example, in the Enchiridion he instructs his Brunswickian pastors
not to be drawn into fruitless debates as to whether or not absolution
is to be regarded as a sacrament. One can confess the truth of
Scripture in different ways. His carefully chosen words regarding absolution
can well serve as a model for showing that theologians need
to be precise, but they can be that without being pedantic. He writes,
“Absolution indeed has one marked characteristic of the sacraments,
namely, that the universal promise of the gospel is applied and sealed
individually to each believer through absolution. And in view of this
mark, some are not wrong in that they number absolution among the
sacraments of the New Testament but since no outward sign or element
was ordained and instituted by Christ for its administration, it
cannot properly be called a sacrament in the way in which Baptism
and the Lord’s Supper are called sacraments. Yet logomachiai [wars
about words] are not therefore to be stirred up, provided the thing
itself, taught in Scripture, is kept pure, as the Apology of the Augsburg
Confession teaches” (MWS 110).
42 In his controversy with the Catholics, Chemnitz continually drives
home the point that Scripture, and not papal authority, is the source
for determining the essential nature of the sacraments and their divinely
instituted use. The Romanists practice the withholding of the
cup from the laity chiefly because “the Pope has arrogated to himself
and his the authority and power of imposing whatever he pleases on
consciences, even if it cannot be shown and proved from Scripture,
and again of changing, mutilating, and abrogating even those things
which have the institution and testimony of Scripture” (Ex 2, 358 f.).
After having carefully weighed every word in the Tridentine chapter
on communion under both kinds, Chemnitz records that “I have not
been able to discover that they give so much as the tiniest reason
from the Word of God by which they might attempt to instruct and
quiet the consciences of the lay people so that they could state with