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

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42. Grammatically, “heaven” or “Christ” can be the subject of the sentence. Chemnitz and the
Formula of Concord take the latter view;“Christ must take possession of heaven” (SD VII,
119); “Christ has received heaven itself ” (LS 217). As Pieper has pointed out, the Reformed
“falsified the words” (SD VII, 119) by taking the Dexasthai as a passive instead of a middle
voice; expressed in Christ was enclosed and circumscribed in heaven. For a detailed
discussion of this text, see Pieper II, 326–328.
43. Two Swedish theologians have recently arrived at an entirely different conclusion from
that of Chemnitz. Dr. Ingemar Furberg, connected with the Biblicum Institute of Uppsala,
Sweden, presented the thesis that “Zwingli had maintained that Christ in the first Supper
had given His body and blood to His disciples” (Wisconsin Lutheran Quarterly, January 1977,
p. 81). Some months later another theologian of the Biblicum Institute, Dr. Seth Erlandsson,
promulgated virtually the same thesis in an article,“The Danger of Presumptuous Questions
About the Lord’s Supper.” He wrote that “Luther is carrying on a polemic against Zwingli
and his followers who thought that what was true of the first Supper was not true of our
Supper” (published in Biblicum, 4–5/1977, p. 93 f.; tr. from the Swedish by S. W. Becker,
mimeo; n.d., p. 9).
It is difficult to find a plausible explanation for such an egregious historical error. A clue
may possibly be indicated in Dr. Furberg’s reference to Luther’s Great Confession (W A 26,
283–285; in English, LW 37, 180 f.). Luther here traps Zwingli with his own words. Zwingli
had said that there are action- or deed-words (Thettelwort) which descibe something which
actually happened; and there are command-words (Heisselwort) in which God commands
something. Since Zwingli regards the Verba as deed-words, Luther draws the inevitable
conclusion from this premise,“He admits that Christ did give His body to the disciples in
the first Supper, for he acknowledges that these words, ‘This is my body,’ are action-words,
which did take place at that time. We thank them kindly that they have left us the first,
original Supper” (LW 37, 181).
Since Luther very well knew that Zwingli had adopted not only Carlstadt’s idea that
Christ’s body is in heaven and cannot then at the same time be in the bread but also
Cornelius Hoen’s theory that the bread signifies the body of Christ, he indulges in some
heavy irony of statement. Apparently Doctors Furberg and Erlandsson either were not
aware of Zwingli’s real position, or else of Luther’s use of a trope, verbal irony, in which the
actual intent of the writer is expressed in words which carry the opposite meaning. Possibly
H. G. Haile in the new biography of Luther has the most satisfactory explanation for this
astounding thesis when he speaks of the“sardonic Luther who escaped his biographers,” and
“the quips, puns, and allusions which continue to puzzle earnest interpreters” (Luther: An
Experiment in Biography, New York: Doubleday, 1980, pp. 36 and 41).