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

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are in a way allegories, and as such they represent a self-contained
world. They have their own structure within a larger structure.
They depict objects, persons, and actions in a narrative. They carry
a second meaning along with the surface story, a meaning of religious
or moral significance. For this reason the words with which
they express the content of the narrative cannot be transferred directly
into historical situations. Chemnitz rejects these interpretations
of the adversaries because “in the words of the Supper there
is neither a story, a parable, or a vision, the explanation of which
lies in the words: ‘This is my body.’ . . . Certainly the things which
Christ performed in His Supper were not done in a dream, as if we
can interpret the words: ‘This is my body’ as some kind of dream”
(LS 49).
170 The papalists, having devised a transubstantiation of the bread,
took a slightly different tack to find support for their theory. They
went to Exodus 4 and 7, where the staff was changed into a serpent,
and to John 2, where the water was turned to wine. But this is unacceptable
to Chemnitz because in Exodus “it is written that a rod
changed into or became a serpent; that water is made wine (cf. John
4: 46: ‘He made the water wine.’). But the words of the Supper do
not speak of the bread and the wine in this way” (LS 50). In The Examination
he is more explicit, ‘Scripture openly testifies in express
words that these things [rod, earth, bone, water] have been changed
and turned into something else, so that neither the substance nor
the prior form remain, but that they bear the appearance of those
things into which Scripture says they were changed” (Ex. 2, 263).
Such examples are ruled out by 1 Cor. 10:16. Chemnitz says that
“Paul very clearly and definitely shows that he is speaking about that
communion of the body and blood of Christ which takes place in
the Lord’s Supper” (LS 138).
171 For Chemnitz, Scripture must interpret Scripture. All dogmas of
the church have their own foundation in certain passages of Scripture,
and the meaning of these doctrines is to be developed on the
basis of these passages (LS 31; see p. 18). If someone, on the basis
of a specific text, presents a different doctrine from what Chemnitz
considers Scripture has clearly presented, he is willing to examine
the argument of the opponent. A case in point is his examination
of Acts 3:21, “Whom the heaven must receive” (KJV; hon dei oura-