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

The Sacramental Union |
distributed, and that “body” must refer to the true body of Christ
which He was about to offer on the cross (par. 124 f.). In effect, for
philosophical reasons the Romanists would not take the touto literally
and the Reformed would not accept “body” literally, but must
assert a metonymic figure of speech. The situation is, as Luther said
in The Great Confession, “The Sophists have retained the body and
let the bread go, saying that the bread disappears and sheds its substance
when the Words of Institution are spoken, and the word ‘this’
indicates not the bread, but the body of Christ, since the text says,
‘This is my body.’ Wycliffe, on the contrary, opposes this and retains
the bread, rejecting the body, and says the word ‘this’ indicates
the bread and not the body” (LW 37, 295). Chemnitz agrees with
Luther’s judgment, “In the words of the Supper, since the body of
Christ can be predicated of the bread, the Papalists in the subject devise
a transubstantiation of the bread; the Sacramentarians in place
of the substance of the body of Christ substitute in the predicate
either a symbol of the absent body or something efficacious which is
separate from the substance, which is not present where the bread
is” (LS 54). For both groups the finite is incapable of the infinite. In
view of these divergences, one must look more closely at their escape
hatches.
149 The Romanists fell back on the schoolmen’s category of “identical
predication” (see p. 55). As he begins his examination of this topic,
Chemnitz is thoughtful and does not immediately condemn out of
hand Aristotle in every respect, but speaks respect fully of the “rules
of praise-worthy men” (Ex 2, 259). He does, however, insist that the
answer to the question of what is present and received “should not be
handed over to the schools in such a way that the answer is given and
defined only according to the rules, precepts, or preconceptions of
grammarians, dialecticians, rhetoricians, or some profession of this
type as to what kind of predication this is and who should judge it”
(LS 46). Rather, Chemnitz is guided by the hermeneutical principle
that “divine mysteries can [not] be made subject to the rules of human
sciences” (LS 46; see also p. 21 f.). Writing specifically against
the Tridentine decrees, he declares that “because the sacrament is
something supernatural, heavenly, and divine, therefore it is not
right that faith in it is measured by the Papalists in this debate according
to the rule of Aristotle, Metaphysics VI, concerning the place