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

The Sacramental Union |
of transubstantiation at that point. The problem with that interpretation of Ap X, 2, is
that it was well known that Luther and others had years before rejected the philosophical
explanation of transubstantiation, but took no offense at the word“change” when used in the
context quoted by Melanchthon. As will be seen, Chemnitz takes a more precise, scholarly
view of the situation, and hence does not give up the use of the “change” when employed in
the sense of the Early Church.
32. Prof. Lowell Green, examining early Lutheran liturgies (1533–1559), noted that “the
consecrated host and chalice are always called the Body and Blood in the distribution or
manducation” (A Contemporary Look at the Formula of Concord, edited by Robert D. Preus
and Wilbert Rosin, St. Louis: CPH, 1978,304). From the Chemnitz references already
here adduced, it is obvious that Chemnitz would agree perfectly with the liturgies. Green
proceeds to show that “in the liturgical forms for Holy Communion used by Lutheran
Churches in America it is generally stated that the pastor shall distribute bread and wine.”
Prof. Green calls this” a Reformed practice . . . also retained in the rubrics of the various
orders proposed by the Inter-Lutheran Commission on Worship” (p. 304). As will be seen
from the material in this chapter and the succeeding one on consecration, Chemnitz would
agree with Prof. Green’s judgment. Unfortunately, Prof. John C. Jeske of the Wisconsin
Lutheran Seminary, in reviewing the volume and zeroing in on Prof. Green’s essay on
Article VII, takes exception to the historical evidence that Prof. Green produced. He writes,
“The writer of that chapter [i.e., Prof. Green] also shows a preoccupation with setting the
exact moment in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper when the body of Christ is present.
He speaks of ‘Luther’s position . . . with its emphasis that the bread is the body of Christ
from the consecration onward . . . ’ (205). Luther, however, showed no such preoccupation”
(Wisconsin Lutheran Quarterly, April 1979, 169). But Prof. Jeske produces no historical
evidence to negate the evidence set forth by Prof. Green.
33. LW 37,295, note #223, where the statement is translated from Zwingli’s Friendly Rejoinder,
found in CR 92, 779, and in Luther’s Works, St. Louis edition, 20, 1111.
34. See Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity (1933); Stuart Chase, The Tyranny of Words (1938),
and The Power of Words (1953); S. I. Hayakawa, Language in Action (1939), and its revision,
Language in Thought and Action (1949 and 1964). The use of the word “is” was their great
bugaboo against which they inveighed. Hayakawa recommended that writers use “is” only
“as an auxiliary verb (‘he is coming’)” (Language in Thought and Action, 315). If Shakespeare
had been aware of that advice, one wonders what would have happened to his great
soliloquy, “To be, or not to be.” One also wonders whether Hayakawa (formerly a senator
from California) really ever seriously followed his own advice. Just recently he twice used“is”
(“are”) in the general sense of characterizing a thing which he had identified in the subject.
Conservative Reagan supporters were unhappy over the vague language of the Washington-
Peking joint communique (Shanghai II) on our Taiwan policy. It was so vague that one
could read it as the Chinese do that we have shifted our policy, or as Presidential Counselor
Edwin Meese contended, we had made no real concessions to Peking. Time remarked, “as
the noted semanticist and conservative Republican Senator S. I. Hayakawa pointed out,
more in admiration than frustration: ‘The wonderful thing about language is its ability to
mean whatever you want it to mean. There are enough ambiguities in the agreement so that
no one should be seriously offended’“ (Time, 8/30/82, p. 21; emphasis added).
35. Apparently the only professional philosopher who has deigned to analyze these general
semanticists is Professor Max Black. In dismissing this claim that Aristotle taught that all
subject-predicate statements are identity statements, he uses such words as “absurd” and”
stupid”: