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

| The Lord’s Supper
conversion” (LW 38, 151, 152); “effect conversion and constitute [the
sacrament]” (LW 38, 154, 155, 166, 169, 192); “produce the sacrament or
effect conversion” (LW 38, 197, 198); “according to His command we
join bread and wine to the Word of Christ; however, not this action
of ours, but Christ’s Word and ordinance effect the change” (LW 38,
202; emphasis added). Melanchthon quite naturally has no scruples
about using the term “change” approvingly in the Apology (Ap X, 2),
since he well understands that the public Lutheran doctrine in 1530 is
that when the elements in a legitimate observance of the Supper have
been consecrated, they are Christ’s body and blood without ceasing
to be bread and wine.
140 Chemnitz understands that historically Pope Innocent III at the
Fourth Lateran Council (1215) “first determined the mode of conversion,
which had not been defined in the church before,” and that here
was used for the first time the new word “transubstantiate” (Ex 2,
254). But Chemnitz cannot refrain from calling attention to the fact
that the Tridentine Fathers in Canon II went beyond the Lateran
Council in “hurl[ing] anathemas at those who think otherwise” (Ex
2, 255).
141 In examining the Roman reasons for accepting transubstantiation,
Chemnitz is not afraid to recognize that the consecration effects the
Real Presence and that because of this, a miraculous change has taken
place,
We grant, with Irenaeus, that after the blessing in the Eucharist
the bread is no longer common bread but the Eucharist of the body of
Christ, which now consists of two things — the earthly, that is, bread
and wine, and the heavenly, that is, the body and blood of Christ. This
is certainly a great, miraculous, and truly divine change, since before it was
simply and only ordinary bread and common wine. What now, after the
blessing, is truly and substantially present, offered, and received is truly
and substantially the body and blood of Christ. Therefore we grant that
a certain change takes place, that it can be truly said of the bread that
it is the body of Christ. But we deny that it follows from this that we
must therefore assert the kind of transubstantiation which the Papalists
teach” (Ex 2, 257 f.; emphasis added). 32
Modes of Predication
142 Chemnitz’s analysis of the reasons that the Council of Trent so tenaciously
clung to the doctrine of transubstantiation, together with
his examination of why the Reformed refused to accept the words