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

The Sacramental Union |
solche Mittheilung/ohne Zertrennung der Eygenschrafften/geschehen konne/Dem wirs
auch befehlen/und in solchem Geheimniiss ausserhalb seines Worts/mit unser Vernunfft
nichts dichten oder griibeln sollen (Ap FC, 81a).
18. Schaff in The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge III, 57. Schlink takes
the position that in the Formula of Concord, with respect to Brenz’s absolute omnipresence
of Christ as the only mode of His presence besides the circumscriptive, a compromise was
necessary, since Chemnitz taught only a multivolipresence (or a multipresence), “We are
faced with a compromise in which neither Chemnitz nor Brenz has his way” (Theology of
the Lutheran Confessions, Philadelphia: Muehlenberg, 1961, note 25, p. 189).
19. See also LW 37, 65 f., where in That These Words, etc. (1527), Luther analyzes these modes
of presence.
20. It will be noted that President Preus has translated en logoo with the expression“in a sense.”
I am not entirely sure why he has (possibly because of the lack of the article too?). But it
seems to me that the phrase would be more accurately translated, “He has all creatures
present with Him in the Word. “ Throughout the entire TNC Chemnitz sets forth the
thesis that after the Incarnation the Person of the Logos is never outside the human nature,
and the assumed human nature is never outside the Logos. Further, a few pages later (463)
President Preus has translated logos (without the article) in this way,“But just as the human
nature subsists in the Logos” (emphasis added). The point is worthy of investigation, since
some have held that Chemnitz did not teach a general omnipresence of Christ’s human
nature (see note 18).
21. Schlink, 189 (see note 18). Pieper (Christian Dogmatics, St. Louis: CPH, 1951, II, 195–205)
and Hardt (Venerabilis, etc., 111–115) have dealt most thoroughly with this charge, ably
refuting it with solid evidence. Hardt traces the popularization of this viewpoint to Seeberg,
Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichten, and Ritschl, Dogmengeschichte des Protestantism us, Hardt
111, note 72.
22. See Pieper, II, 199.
23. In the Histori des Sacramentstreit, Chemnitz, Kirchner, and Selneccer quote and summarize
from Luther’s 1527 polemic against Zwingli, That These Words of Christ, “This is My Body,”
etc., Still Stand Firm Against the Fanatics (LW 37, 3–150). They explain that Luther attached
such a long title to the writing just because the word of the Son of God clearly says that the
consecrated bread and wine in the Supper are His body and blood (HS 113).
24. Vilmos Vajta (Luther on Worship; see note #1) says that “Luther defines the presence of
God in a twofold sense. First, he speaks of God’s omnipresence and second of His presence
in the incarnate Christ, in the church, and the service. These two modes of His presence
must be kept carefully apart” (85). Such a paradigm imposed on the Scriptural material
will not do justice to all the Scriptural evidence which Luther and Chemnitz have pulled
together for their systematic presentation of the Real Presence. Vajta makes the general
omnipresence of Christ (“God’s omnipresence is shared by Christ” – p. 86) the basis for the
sacramental presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper,“Christ is in the elements long before
they are placed on the altar” (95), “The Real Presence rests on God’s presence in all His
works” (96).
Luther and Chemnitz sharply distinguish between the repletive presence and the
definitive presence of Christ’s body and blood in the consecrated elements (see p. 44 f.).
For a thorough-going analysis of Vajta’s viewpoint together with his misrepresentation
of Luther’s understanding of the limits of the natural knowledge of God, see Hardt (note
#1), pp. 81–89.
25. Luther understands the Koinonia of 1 Cor. 10:16 as “the common possession in which all