The Lord’s Supper in The Book of Concord


Introduction

I submitted this paper to Drs. Eric W. Gritsch and Dr. Robert W. Jenson on May 16, 1986, as part of my work in The Lutheran Confessions, a class at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg.

Paper

From the moment of its post-resurrection inception, the church catholic has been the gathering of believers around its risen and reigning Lord, Jesus the Christ, who has come, is present, and will continue to come in various ways. One of these ways, termed variously the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion, and Eucharist, for example, has the following Pauline Scriptural witness:

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” (1 Corinthians 11:23-25, RSV)

Throughout the history of the church, then, numerous interpretations and ancillary practices have arisen concerning this fundamental action of the church’s life. One particular—and for the purposes of this study—vitally important wrestling with this act is that set forth in The Book of Concord.

That this view has any importance over against others lies in the fact that The Book of Concord collects in one place many of the documents produced during the birth and early life of the reforming movement within the church known as Lutheranism. (Eric W. Gritsch and Robert W. Jenson, Lutheranism, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976, p. 6) On the basis of the significance of this movement, then, the movement’s understanding of the Lord’s Supper is key.

This paper, therefore, will seek to explore and to explicate the understanding of the Lord’s Supper developed in The Book of Concord utilizing the following methodology. First of all, the paper will present an in-depth analysis of the two primary statements concerning the Lord’s Supper, namely those presented in the Augsburg Confession and the Small Catechism, based upon the commentary provided by these and by the other works in the book. This will be accomplished from the Sitz im Leben of the documents themselves, i.e. the Reformation period of the sixteenth century. Secondly, an hermeneutical leap will be made to address the problem of articulating an understanding of the Lord’s Supper in twentieth-century terms.

For the purposes both of reference and of a sensible starting point, presented below are the two chief statements concerning the Lord’s Supper. Martin Luther, in his Small Catechism of 1529, writes, “what is the Sacrament of the Altar? Answer: Instituted by Christ himself, it is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, under the bread and wine, given to us Christians to eat and to drink.” (SC 6.1-2, p. 3.51 in The Book of Concord, trans. and ed. by Theodore G. Tappert, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959. All references to the confessions are from this edition, using abbreviations from Lutheranism.) The other major statement, set forth in the Augsburg Confession of 1530, says, in the English translation of the German form, “It is taught among us that the true body and blood of Christ are really present in the Supper of our Lord under the form of bread and wine and are therefore distributed and received.” (AC 10.1, p. 34)

A closer analysis of the two statements reveals both similarities of form, the ordering of elements, and variations of the wording of the elements. First, the statements both set forth some motive for even mentioning the topic of the Lord’s Supper in the first place. The Small Catechism says the Lord’s Supper is “instituted by Christ himself,” (SC 6.2, p. 351) while the Augsburg Confession begins, “It is taught among us.” (AC 10.1, p. 34.) Both phrases are declarations of authority undergirding the succeeding pronouncements. While the catechism seeks a seemingly more authoritative ground in the institution of Christ, the confession rests its statement upon the teaching authority of the church. Yet the institution of Christ is known through the witness of Scripture and it is “on the basis of the Holy Scriptures, these things are preached, taught, communicated, and embraced.” (Preface to AC, p., 25) And so the final authoritative appeal of both statements rests upon the Scriptural witness, testifying to the centrality of the principle of sola scriptura.

The second element of the two statements concerns part of what constitutes the Lord’s Supper. Here there is more uniformity in the wording; the Small Catechism contains the phrase “the true body and blood of our Lord
Jesus Christ,” (SC 6.2, p. 3.51) and the Augsburg Confession “the true body and blood of Christ.” (AC 10.1, p. 34) The inclusion or exclusion of the words “Lord Jesus” does not alter the sense of the phrases. What these elements intend will be considered later. For now, it is sufficient to demonstrate the similarity of the two formulations.

The third element concerns the way in which the body and blood of Jesus have being in the Lord’s Supper. The Small Catechism specifies they are “under the bread and wine,” (SC 6.2, p. 351) and the Augsburg Confession notes they “are really present under the form of bread and wine.” (AC 10.1, p. 34) There are significant differences in wording here; yet the connection with the artifacts of bread and wine merits noting.

The fourth element concerns the distribution. The Small Catechism says the Lord’s Supper is “given to us Christians to eat and to drink,” (SC 6.2, p. 351) whereas the Augsburg Confession maintains it is “distributed and received.” (AC 10.1, p. 34) Both formulations acknowledge that both kinds—the bread and the cup—are given to all who come to the table, even though they state the matter very differently.

The four-fold shape of these two major formulations concerning the Lord’s Supper suggests concern for the following issues. By what authority and command is the Lord’s Supper enacted? What constitutes the Lord’s Supper? (This question includes the second and third elements above.) Who receives the Lord’s Supper? One additional question should also be considered: What does the Lord’s Supper do?

Turning first of all to the question of by what authority the Lord’s Supper is done in the church, one observes that with unanimity the many references in the Book of Concord make the Christocentrjc assertion that Christ both commanded and first enacted the Lord’s Supper. According to the Augsburg Confession, ’the Lord’s Supper is one of the “signs and testimonies of God’s will toward us.” (AC 13.1, p. 35) Just because the Lord’s Supper is of God’s will for God’s people, it thereby has the authority of Christ attached to it. With regard to the question of whether the laity may drink the cup as well as eat the bread, the Augsburg Confession reaffirms they may as “there is a clear command and order of Christ, ’Drink of it, all of you (Matt. 26:27),’” (AC 22.1, p. 149) In this case, the confessions appeal to the Scriptural attestation of Christ’s command concerning the Lord’s Supper.

Perhaps the most comprehensive treatment of the authority and command underlying the Lord’s Supper can be found in the Large Catechism. Here Luther begins by citing the Verba, the Pauline form of which was quoted above. (LC 5.3, p. 147) Luther makes the important point, that based upon this account, the Lord’s Supper is not of human artifice, but that it receives its inception and injunction to perform from Jesus Christ himself. (LC 5.3, p. 447) In passing, one should note this view attributes the Verba to the lips of the person Jesus, and makes no allowance for the later historical-critical conclusions of oral tradition and the period of the early church. That the Verba may not in fact be specifically words of Jesus Christ, but words of the Christ-community does not blunt Luther’s claim, when one assumes Scripture may be inspired truth without being accurate fact, as the Scriptures themselves claim.

Thus, in summary of this point, the confessions maintain that the Lord’s Supper was begun by Christ Jesus and that Christ gave orders to enact the Supper according to Christ’s directions. This is well and good to know, but the next most obvious question presses: What is this Lord’s Supper, that Christ commands we eat and drink?

First of all, throughout the confessions, when making reference to the Lord’s Supper and other such mandated actions, the reformers employ the word “sacrament.“ One definition given for sacrament is “rites which have the command of God and to which the promise of grace has been added.” CAP 13.3, p. 211) For the reformers, a rite is an action to be performed. That the Lord’s Supper, which involved addressing, praying, singing, eating, and drinking, is an action is obvious. It has been shown above that the Supper carries the command of Christ, of God. Thus it remains to show that “the promise of grace has been added” (AP 13.3, p. 211) to the Supper to show that it is in fact a sacrament.

In the Apology to the Augsburg Confession, Melanchthon seeks to explain how it is that a sacrament has God’s promise connected with it. This he does in a crucial passage worth quoting as follows:

Through the Word and rite God simultaneously moves the heart to believe and take hold of faith, as Paul says (Rom. 10:17), “Faith comes from what is heard.” As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart, so the rite itself enters through the eyes to move the heart. The Word and the rite have the same effect, as Augustine said so when he called the sacrament “the visible word,” for the rite is received by the eyes and is a sort of picture of the Word, signifying the same thing as the Word. Therefore both have the same effect. (AP 13.5, pp. 211-212)

It is not immediately obvious that this passage speaks of promise at all; one must first understand what Melanchthon intends by the word “Word.” Further along in this particular section of the Apology to the Augsburg Confession, Melanchthon makes a relation between Word and Gospel. (AP 13.11, p. 212) By Gospel, we can take Melanchthon to mean the proclamation of Christ’s death and resurrection out of love for humanity. For his understanding of Word, it is sufficient to note he identifies it with the second person of the Trinity, who is incarnate as Jesus Christ. (AP 3.1, p. 107)

With this relation in thind, Melanchthon points to two passages of Scripture where the notions of God’s promise and God’s Word and Gospel are bound together. The first is “The Gospel is the power of God for salvation for every one who has faith’ (Rom. 1:i6)” and the second is “’My word that goes forth from my mouth shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it’ (Isa. 55:11).” (AP 13.11, p. 212) God’s promise that God’s Word does something is implicit in the unconditionality of the verbs in these two citations: “is” and “shall accomplish.” (AP 13.11, p. 212) These phrases speak of certainty, of assurance, of the will of God that something shall happen. This is God’s promise, and it is sure.

Thus, to summarize several points, according to the confessions, God’s Word promises to effect change in those to whom it is proclaimed. The change wrought by the Word in those it chooses to reach is of a specific nature. The Augsburg Confession specifies what God’s Word in the forms of Gospel and sacraments does: “Through these, as through means, he gives the Holy Spirit, who work faith, when and where he pleases, in those who hear the Gospel.” (AC 5.2, p. 31) This is to say that what God’s Word does is to create in people the faith that believes what the Word promises to be true.

All of these pieces, then, comment upon the extended passage of Melanchthons quoted above. Melanchthon analyzes the action of a sacrament in terms of “Word and rite.” (AP 13.5, p. 211) The preceding discussion has laid out how the Word works faith in the recipients. In a parallel and overlapping fashion, then, Melanchthon states that the rite does a similar thing: “As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart, so the rite itself enters through the eyes to move the heart.” (AP 13.5, p. 212) Just as the Word is communicated by audible proclamation, whereby it is heard, and thereby works faith in the hearers, when and where God wills, so too is the rite the Word communicated by visible demonstration, whereby it is seen, and thereby works faith in the viewers, when and where God wills. And God wills it where God has promised it. And where God has promised it is in the rite of the Lord’s Supper.

Conclusively, then, the confession assert the Lord’s Supper is one of the “rites which have the command of God and to which the promise of grace has been added.” (AP 13.3, p. 211) This answers several of the questions posed above. One, by what authority and command is the Lord’s Supper enacted? It is enacted in accordance to God’s precept. Two, what does the Lord’s Supper do? As an action performed according to God’s precept, the Supper has God’s assured working and strengthening of faith in the participants. Three, what constitutes the Lord’s Supper? A mandated set of actions performed according to divine precept constitutes the Lord’s Supper. A specific exploration of the rite remains one of the tasks to be completed. And the other remaining question to be answered in the historical context of The Book of Concord is about who receives the Lord’s Supper.

To unpack the specifics of the rite itself, let the discussion turn to these pairs: bread–body and cup–bread. To aid in discerning what these pairs intend, it is helpful to recall the initial two statements of the Small Catechism, that the Lord’s Supper “is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, under the bread and wine,” (SC 6.2, p. 351) and of the Augsburg Confession, that in the Lord&#8217’s Supper, “the true body and blood of Christ are really present…under the form of bread and wine.” (AC 10.1, p. 34) By the parallelism of these statements, one can see the reformers intending to make some sort of correspondence between body and bread and between blood and wine.

What sort of correspondence exists between the objects of these pairs is tied up in some difficult phrases: “really present&#822`; (AC 10.1, p. 34) and “truly and substantially present,&#822`; (AP 10.1, p. 179) for example. Perhaps an enlightening way to explore what they mean is to see how the reformers’ understanding of the Lord’s Supper was drawn out in response to a controversy. In response to the challenges of the Sacramentarians, the Epitome of the Formula of Concord sets forth just the question posed above. Sacramentarians would say the phrases above do not apply to discussion of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. (EP 7.2, p. 482) Sacramentarians seek to deny the physical, bodily presence of Christin the Lord’s Supper, and assert that Jesus Christ has presence of Spirit, rather than of body. (EP 7.5, p. 482)

In response then to the Sacramentarians, the reformers set forth various “Affirmative Theses–Confession of the Pure Doctrine of the Holy Supper Against the Sacramentarians.” (EP 7.5, p. 482) One thesis contends “that the words of the testament of Christ are to be understood in no other way than their literal sense, and not as though the bread symbolized the absent body and the wine the absent blood of Christ, but that because of the sacramental union, they are truly the body and blood of Christ.” (EP 7.7, p. 1482) This statement, is in some respects, helpful for understanding the relation between the elements and Christ’s presence, and in some ways, of no use whatsoever. By the process of definition or delimitation by negation, this statement contends that the bread and wine are not symbols of the body and blood. That is helpful, for it precludes any talk of Christ’s presence asserting he is somewhere or somewhen else and that the Supper is mere symbolic reminder or memorial to a past event.

Where the above thesis falls short is once one has said Christ’s presence is not symbolic, one is at a loss to explain how bread and wine are “truly the body and blood of Christ.” (EP 7.7, p. 482) Some light is shed by noting the use of the phrase “truly and essentially present” (EP 7.6, p. 482) in the preceding thesis. By the use of these various terms describing Christ’s presence as presence “truly and essentially and really and substantially,” there is only one reasonable conclusion to draw from this.

That conclusion must be that however Christ is present in the Lord’s Supper, the presence is such that, in accord with the instituted and commanded words of Christ, the bread is his body and the wine is his blood. When one looks at the bread and wine, one sees the body and blood of Christ. That is the form Christ’s physical presence has, and he does not have a physical presence somewhere else than where he has promised to be.

As a result, the one remaining question with which to deal is the question of who receives the Supper. By a somewhat backdoor approach recognizing that the church is the gathering of believers about the risen Lord, and that believers may still be sinners, one can state, along with Luther, that “even though a knave should receive or administer it, it is the true sacrament (That is, Christ’s body and blood) just as truly as when one uses it most worthily.” (LC 5.16, p. 448) Luther can say this of the Lord’s Supper because of his insistence that what makes the sacrament “work” is that God has made certain promises that are not at all conditioned on the works, performance, disposition, or motives of the persons involved in the Supper. In addition, even though one may agree with this, yet say one must believe the promises, the confessions state that such faith is worked in the recipient by the will of God. Thus the sacraments, including the Lord’s Supper, “are signs and testimonies of God’s will toward us for the purpose of awakening and strengthening our faith.” (AP 13.1, p. 35)

The faith spoken of here comes to the person from outside the person, as Luther notes, “Whoever lets these words be addressed to him and believes that they are true has what the words declare.” (LC 5.35, p. 450)

Finally, an end, or at least a stopping point, to the inquiry begun under the guise of determining what the reformers intended by the two rather short statements in the Augsburg Confession and the Small Catechism, has been made. A summary is needed. Putting the two statements into the terms worked out in this paper, one has that the Lord’s Supper is an action of the gathered body of believers, performed at the command of Christ, according to the Verba to eat blessed bread and drink blessed wine, which are the body and blood of the risen Christ. All in the church may participate, both sinner and saint, and the faith which apprehends the promises God has made is the faith worked in persons by God through means.

The last section of this paper will treat an application of this understanding of the Lord’s Supper to the case of a particular congregation. This theological case study will show how the understanding worked out in the sixteenth century is eminantly applicable to situations in the twentieth century. Further, the treatment will present some specific addresses that can be made to those concerned in the case study, addresses which will attempt to communicate the promise and action of the Lord’s Supper.

The case study arises from experience with the congregation of Salem Evangelical Lutheran Church, Lebanon, Pennsylvania. A Pennsylvania German Lutheran congregation 226 years of age, the parish has been under the same pastor for the past 30 years. Holy Communion is “observed” the first Sunday of each month, following the second setting in the Service Book and Hymnal.

The bulletin prints the following announcement each Sunday when the Lord’s Supper is performed: “We invite all who discern in the Bread and Wine of the Sacrament the true Body and Blood of Christ to join us in fellowship at His Table.”

The pastor has contended that “weekly communion reduces attendance.” The church council recently voted to use individual glasses rather than a common cup, “for fear of the transmission of disease.” The piety of the congregation is funereal even on days of celebration, such as Easter.

Beginning with the invitation printed in the bulletin, all seems regular and confessional, with the exception of two points. It is somewhat strange that no mention is made of inviting the baptized to the table, as in the Augsburg Confession, the article on the Lord’s Supper contextually follows on the heels of the article on baptism. Also, if one understands baptism to be God’s act of claiming one as God’s child and working faith in one, this must of necessity precede being sustained in faith by the meal.

The second point is of somewhat more concern. The word “discern” is a troublesome word as it stands in the text.

It has two senses that seem to be what the announcement intends. The first is to make out something hidden and the second is to understand with the mind. Both of these senses are disastrous for the integrity of the Supper. The first approaches denying what the rest of the announcement asserts, namely that Christ is really present in the Supper. One could almost claim that “discern” carries the flavor of recognizing the symbolism of the bread and the wine. This would be a Sacramentarian position. What the confessional position on the Supper worked out above would allow one to say is this: “If you see the bread and wine during the Supper, you see all the body and blood Christ has; He hasn’t any body any place else than where he promises to be. This is one of those places.” The second sense of discern, to understand with the mind, displaces and undermines the necessity for receiving the Supper in faith. It is not by a work of the intellect one knows Christ is truly present in the Supper, but by an apprehension in faith, a faith that is worked and sustained in one from without by God. The address one could make to the person thinking it necessary to understand how Christ is present really in the Supper is this: “If you must understand intellectually how Christ is present before coming to the table, you will never be ready. Instead, it is just because you are unable to understand this, that God has promised God’s grace in the meal and calls you to God’s table in the sin of your ignorance to be built up in faith by God’s effort.“

The pastor’s contention that frequent celebration reduces attendance is not an issue specifically addressable by Table discourse, except in this way. If it is true that more frequent Communion reduces attendance, then that is all the more reason for the pastor to proclaim what it is the people are staying away from and to expose the depravity of their lives in words like these: “If you could see how many daggers, spears, and arrows are at every moment aimed at you, you would be glad to come to the sacrament as often as possible.” (LC 5.82, p. 456)

Lastly, the funereal piety of the people as they “observe” the Lord’s Supper seems to stem from the understanding that the Supper is merely a reenactment of what Christ did back there. And then, naturally, there is reason to be sad, as they stand on the Maundy Thursday side of the cross with death looking them in the eye. A Lutheran confessional approach to the problem might be the following: “That Lord whose cross stares you in the face, that Lord Jesus Christ has overcome sin and death and is risen and reigning in the world right now. And because Christ is risen, Christ is alive and really present in this Supper. Here, ‘the body of Christ, given for you. The blood of Christ, shed for you.’”

In this way, an understanding of the Lord’s Supper worked out under the guidance of the Lutheran confessions as presented in The Book of Concord, allows one to address God’s promise to persons. This promise is, namely, that God has promised to gather God’s people together about God’s table, to be present with them in the breaking of bread and the sharing of the cup, to strengthen and uphold them in faith through this meal, despite and just because of their estranged human condition.

Works Cited

Gritsch, Eric W. and Robert W. Jenson. Lutheranism. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. 1976.

May, Herbert G. and Bruce M. Metzger. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha. New York: Oxford University Press. 1973.

Tappert, Theodore G. ed. and trans. The Book of Concord. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. 1959.