Luther approached the whole subject by a different path. What repelled
him in the mediæval doctrine of the Holy Supper was the way in which he
believed it to trample on the spiritual priesthood of all believers. He
protested against Transubstantiation and private Masses, because they
were the most flagrant instances of that contempt. When he first
preached on the subject (1519) it was to demand the "cup" for the laity,
and he makes use of an expression in his sermon which reveals how his
thoughts were tending. He says that in the Sacrament of the Holy Supper
"the communicant is so united to Christ _and His saints_, that Christ's
life and sufferings _and the lives and sufferings of the saints_ become
his." No one held more strongly than Luther that the Atonement was made
by our Lord, and by Him alone. Therefore he cannot be thinking of the
Atonement when he speaks of union with the lives and the sufferings of
the saints. He believes that the main thing in the Sacrament is that it
gives such a companionship with Jesus as His disciples and saints have
had. There was, of course, a reference to the death of Christ and to the
Atonement, for apart from that death no companionship is possible; but
the reference is indirect, and through the thought of the fellowship. In
the Sacrament we touch Christ as His disciples might have touched Him
when He lived on earth, and as His glorified saints touch Him now. This
reference, therefore, clearly shows that Luther saw in the Sacrament of
the Supper the presence of the glorified Body of our Lord, and that the
primary use of the Sacrament was to bring the communicant into contact
with that glorified Body. This required a presence (and Luther thought a
presence extended in space) of the glorified Body of Christ in the
Sacrament in order that the communicant might be in actual contact with
it. But communion with the Living Christ implies the appropriation of
the death of Christ, and of the Atonement won by His death. Thus the
reference to the Crucified Christ which Zwingli reaches directly, Luther
attains indirectly; and the reference to the Living Risen Christ which
Zwingli reaches indirectly, Luther attains directly. Luther avoided the
need of a priestly miracle to bring the Body extended in space into
immediate connection with the elements Bread and Wine, by introducing a
scholastic theory of what is meant by presence in Space. A body may be
present in Space, said the Schoolmen, in two ways: it may be present in
such a way that it excludes from the space it occupies any other body,
or it may be present occupying the same space with another body. The
Glorified Body of Christ can be present in the latter manner. It was so
when our Lord after His Resurrection appeared suddenly among His
disciples in a room when the doors were shut; for then at some moment of
time it must have occupied the same space as a portion of the walls or
of the door. Christ's glorified Body can therefore be naturally in the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
A History of the Reformation (Vol. 2 of 2) — John Shaqi
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