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II

LUTHER’S DOCTRINE OF THE EUCHARIST: ITS BASIS AND PURPOSE (1923)

I

‘A CHRISTIAN must know that there is no reliquary on earth more holy than the Word of God, for the sacrament itself is created and blessed and hallowed through God’s Word.’1 In the context in which Luther wrote these words, the statement has primarily a critical significance. There are similar statements also in his earlier writings. The sacrament is what it is only through the Word of God and not otherwise.

Luther defended the validity of this truth on two fronts. First, by repudiating the equation of sacrament with sacrifice. It was not man’s act for God which established the sacrament as such; it was the act of God in joining his Word to a sign. ‘In the sacrament thy God, Christ himself, acts, speaks, works with thee through the priest; and what happens there is no human work or word. There God himself tells thee plainly all the things which have been said by Christ.’2 ‘When a man is to undertake a work together with God and is to receive something from him, it necessarily follows that the man does not begin and lay the first stone. God alone, without any solicitation or demand from men, must come forward and give men direction and promise. The same Word of God comes first, and the Word is the foundation, the rock on which every work, word, thought of men is built. This Word a man must thankfully accept and he must truly believe the divine promise. And he must not doubt that as God promises, so it happens.’3

The Mass is nothing other than ‘a testament and sacrament, in which God makes a promise to us and gives us grace and mercy. So it will not do for us to make out of it a good work, an act of service to God. For a testament gives a benefit; it does not receive one (beneficium datum not acceptum). It is not the acceptance of any benefit from us, but is the gift of a benefit to us.’ How can the acceptance of a bequest be a good work? ‘Only if one were to call it a good work for a man to stand still and let himself be benefited, be given food and drink, be clothed and healed, be helped and set free.’ Therefore ‘there is here not duty (officium) but benefit (beneficium), not work or service, but only enjoyment and profit’.1 It is ‘not my work but God’s; with it I merely let myself be helped and benefited. Therefore, as far apart as are God’s work and my work, so far separated also are conceiving this sacrament to be God’s work and conceiving it to be our work.’2

Certainly at times Luther made the attempt to re-interpret the idea of sacrifice instead of discarding it. We are to ‘offer’ to God ‘an empty and hungry heart’,3 or ‘ourselves and all that we have, with constant prayer’, to offer ‘praise and thanksgiving’. But in the continuation of the last passage, it becomes clear that reinterpretation become rejection. For we are not ourselves to present this sacrifice before the eyes of God; we are to lay it upon Christ and let him present it. He ‘prays for us in heaven, receives our prayer and offering, and through himself as a good priest makes them acceptable before God.’ Therefore, ‘we do not offer Christ, but Christ offers us’.4 The fact that blessing and thanksgiving are included in the Mass, according to the example of Christ, ‘bears witness that men are receiving or have received something from God and are not offering something to God’.5

Luther also repudiated, validating this position again by the Word of God, the identification of sacrament and the sacramental elements. The sacrament as such did not depend on the sacramental character of an element, but on the Word joined to the element. ‘If you cannot accept … the Word, then you do not accept the sacrament, for if the elements are without the Word, they are not sacraments.’6 ‘If the Word of God were not with the bread and wine, there would be no spiritual food, and there would be no exercise of faith. Therefore, food and drink on which God has set his Word and sign are equally spiritual food everywhere, however external and material they may be. And if God tells me to hold up a straw, then there would be spiritual food and drink in the straw—not because of the nature of the straw, but because of the Word and sign of God’s truth7 and presence.’ Again, ‘if God’s Word and sign is not there or is not recognized, then it is no help if God himself be there; even as Christ said of himself (John 6:63) “the flesh profiteth nothing”, because they did not heed the words which he spoke in his flesh, the words which make his body the true food.… Therefore we must not attend merely to God’s works, signs and wonders as blind reason does, but to the Word of God in them as faith does.’ Without the Word, ‘the signs and works of God’ are not there; ‘or if they are there and are seen without the Word, only by the eyes; then men only gaze at them open-mouthed and are momentarily astonished at them as at all other new things which require no faith’.1

Occasionally Luther can also put it conversely. Christ, who is truly this bread, is not to be enjoyed until ‘God speaks the Word thereby, so that you can hear him and recognize him. For what help is it to you if Christ sits in heaven or is under the form of bread? He must be imparted and served and come to words through (!) the inner and the external Word’.2 Even in this converse form, the Word makes the sacrament, that is makes it with spoken words a real sacrament. ‘A thousand times more depends on the words than on the “forms” of the sacrament, and without the words it is a mockery of God’,3 ‘idle gesture and pointing’,4 ‘a body without soul, a cask without wine, a strong-box without money, a form without substance, a sheath without dagger’.5 ‘The words belong in the ears, the signs in the mouth.’6 Or, ‘the words are his divine pledge, promise and testament. The signs are his sacrament, that is, holy signs.’7 And the conclusion in the last two passages runs: ‘much more’ depends ‘on the words than on the signs’; ‘where the preaching was not required, the Mass would never have been instituted’.8 And he continues further: ‘The signs indeed might not exist and man might still have the words and accordingly still be blessed without sacrament, but not without testament.’9

Consistently with this judgement that more depends on the Word than on the sign, Luther showed a certain indifference10 towards the question of the cup for the laity, which so exercised his contemporaries. The Hussites ‘are not right when they think it must be given’. One can equally well take only one element of the sacrament, or none at all ‘as actually the patriarchs did in the desert’.1 Even in his first tract on the Lord’s Supper, directed against the ‘signifiers’, Luther repeated that ‘the most important and the main part of the sacrament is the Word of Christ’, that ‘far more depends on these words than on the sacrament itself’, that it is ‘most necessary’ ‘in the sacrament to lead the people again to the Word.’2

But it would be a serious error if, because of this crucial importance of the concept of the Word, we should try to picture Luther on the way to supporting a mystical, spiritualistic concept of the sacrament. Criticism and negation are the same only for theological dilettanti. Luther meant negatively neither the distinction between sacrament and Word, nor that between the sacrament and the sacramental sign. Such distinction is much too meaningful not to be full of hidden implications. Parallel to the contrast between Word of God and sacramental act and sign runs the other contrast between Word of God and work of God, between promise and being and event, between promising and giving, between conferring benefit and receiving benefit,3 between the ‘blade of straw’ which God could tell us to hold up and that which it then would be by the power of this Word as sign of ‘God’s truth and presence’.4

This second contrast points clearly to its own transcending. Must not the first contrast between (the same!) Word and the sacramental act and sign (which indeed presents and proclaims the second contrast) share in the prospect of that transcending? Was not the ‘and is made’ (et fit) in the Augustinian canon, ‘the Word is joined to the element and it is made sacrament’, to be more true and more important for Luther than the critical ‘is added’ (accedit)? A further group of passages shows us that Luther’s thinking on the Word in the Lord’s Supper did of necessity proceed in this direction.

It is at once evident that in many of the passages already cited, Luther speaks, not of ‘the Word’ but of ‘the words’. However, these ‘words’ (no proof is needed) are the instituting words of Christ at the Last Supper, according to the Synoptics and Paul. These recorded words of God make the Lord’s Supper a mighty Word, the Word and Work of God, the real sacrament.1 We come now to a plain statement of the position from which alone the interpretation of the development postulated above is to be understood. ‘But I set against the decisions of all the Fathers, against the wisdom and word of all angels, men or devils, the Scripture and the Gospel. Therein it is plainly stated that the Mass is a Word and Work of God, in which God promises and manifests his grace. Here I stand, here I challenge, here I walk proudly and say, God’s Word is for me above all. God’s majesty stands beside me, therefore I yield not a hair’s breadth, though a thousand Augustines and a thousand separate churches were against me. I am certain that the true Church holds to God’s Word with me; let the so-called churches depend on men’s words.’2 Even in these recorded words of God there is a limitation. In them God ‘bears witness that remission of sins is given to all who believe; Christ’s body is given and his blood is shed for them’.3 The words contain the promise (promissio) in which Luther recognizes the Word of God. Because of the specific content of this promise, Luther explains the whole Christian message as nothing but an exposition of the words of the Lord’s Supper. ‘The preaching should be nothing but the explanation of the words of Christ when he said, This is my body.… What is the whole Gospel except an explanation of this testament?’4 ‘For this would be teaching faith and truly building the Church.’5

What then can the Mass, the sacramental act and sign to which these words of Christ apply, be, other than the testament itself as explained in the preaching, the highest actual fulfilment of those words of promise? And therefore obviously Luther can make the equation: the Mass=the New Testament, as he does in the title of the important treatise of 1520;6 or he can call the Mass ‘the centre of the eternal and new testament’ in the title of another writing of 1522.7

‘These words’ are the meaning and content of the Mass. ‘As I said, the whole virtue of the Mass consists in the words of Christ.’8 ‘If we wish to hold Mass rightly and to understand it, we must let go of everything which the eyes and all the senses may show us in the service … until we stand before the Word of Christ; and we must fully realize that with the Word, he consummates and establishes the Mass and has commanded us to consummate it. For on that Word the Mass wholly depends, with all its nature, work, use and fruit; otherwise nothing of the Mass is received.’1 ‘Therefore if you will worthily receive the sacrament and testament, see that you bring forward these living words of Christ, that you establish yourself upon them with strong faith, and that you crave what Christ has promised you in them. And so it will be yours, if you are worthy and ready.’ Thus it is necessary to believe the words of Christ and so to allow them to be true. Everything depends on the words ‘which one grasps as firmly as gold and jewels, and keeps nothing else more steadily before the eyes of the heart’.2 Luther makes everything so dependent on the ‘words’ that he can identify the Lord’s Supper with their content. ‘You see therefore that the Mass is the promise of the remission of sins made to us by God, and it is such a promise that it was confirmed by the death of the Son of God.’3 This promise it is which makes the sacraments (of both the Old and New Testaments) to be a sacrament, in distinction from a mere sign. God promises that ‘whoever has the sacrament, is to have with it this and that good’.4

The concept of ‘testament’ which was so important to Luther in 1520 was used in a brief formulation in the following way: ‘The testator, Christ, is about to die; the words which they now call words of consecration are the words of the testament; the inheritance is the forgiveness of sin promised in the testament. The heirs are all who believe.’ These four components ‘complete the testament’.5

According to this interpretation as given by Luther himself the words of the testament are not the whole ‘testament’. They point backward, back to the testator, and point forward to the inheritance and the heirs. It therefore will not and cannot be possible to persist in understanding the sacrament as testament which is only promise! The emphasis must now be put on the other side. ‘These words’ are the meaning and content of the sacrament. They make the sacrament. But actually they require (for us!) an endorsement of what they say to us. For there, where the promise appears as endorsed, there is the sacrament. The fact that in need, ‘in the desert’1 the implementation must be and is dispensed with, does not change the rule that we need the implementation and nothing can alter at all the power of the ‘endorsed’ promise. The possibility of declaring the sacrament to be something superfluous lies as little within the range of Luther’s thought as does doubt that the Word really makes the sacrament. On both points, that the Word necessarily establishes the sacrament and that it possesses effectuating power, Luther is consistent throughout. (Even here he is in agreement with Augustine’s visible word.)

The Word becomes visible as sacrament, is revealed and brought within our sight, so to speak, for a transaction in ‘open court’ (publici juris). It moves outside the sphere of the merely audible and intelligible to the threshold of the world of sight and touch. (Exactly so much and no more, in my judgement, should be said here.) ‘Hence it follows that the sacraments, that is the external words of God spoken by a priest, are in truth a great consolation and are perfectly comprehensible signs of God’s purpose. On them a man should support himself as on a good staff, like the one with which the patriarch Jacob went through Jordan. Or they should be like a lantern by which a man guides himself, on which he must keep his eyes steadily as he walks the long road of death, sin and hell.’2

Luther interpreted the elevation of the host, not as a sacrifice (oblatio) to God, but as ‘an admonition to us, by which we are summoned to faith in this testament which [the officiating priest] so exhibits and proclaims with the words of Christ, while at the same time he shows the sign of it; and the lifting up of the bread fitly corresponds to the proclamation, “this is my body” ’.3

But Luther prefers to the figure of the relation of promise and sign that of the seal, which he connects with the idea of the testament. ‘His words are for us like a letter, and his signs are like a seal or signet.’4 ‘This is what the priest means when he raises the host. He addresses us rather than God, as if he meant to say: Look here, this is the seal and sign of the testament in which Christ assigned to us the forgiveness of sins and eternal life.’1 Through this seal, the promise is given to me, a binding promise, so that the content (although it is not yet in my possession) is my legal property, so that the promise becomes a deed of transfer. ‘This is the use of the sacrament: thou art able to say, I have this clear (apertum) word (in the German, ‘here I clearly have this word’), my sins are forgiven. Also I have received the seal, I have eaten and drunk. This I can certainly prove, for I have done it in the sight of Satan and the world.’2

Thus while the figure of the ‘testament’ is kept, and I am told that I am the heir and the inheritance is mine, the Word which has clearly come to the threshold of sight and touch in order to tell me this, has ceased to be a second component, separate from the sacramental act and sign. The hidden penetration has occurred in power, and the sacrament is made (et fit sacramentum). ‘Behold, this is then truly God’s Word, Christ is the bread. The bread is God’s Word, and yet is a thing, a piece of bread. For it is in the Word, and the Word is in it. And believing the same Word means eating the bread; and he to whom God gives it lives eternally.’3 Divine food and drink is now in this ‘blade of straw’—in the sign established through the Word of divine truth and the divine presence, not otherwise—but just because of that: est, it is.

II

‘Promise and faith are correlative, so that where there has been no promise, there cannot be faith; and where faith has not been, there is no promise.’4 ‘God prepared here food, table and a meal for our faith, but faith is not fed except by the Word of God alone.’5

This, then, is the second pillar of Luther’s doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, faith nourished by the Word of God. And this also has primarily a critical significance. The sacrament is received only through faith and through nothing else. In this context also the two restrictions, not through sacramental act and not through the receiving of the sacramental sign, would be distinct; but the nature of the content results in a continual fusion. Without impairing the clarity of our investigation we can therefore speak of both together.

The sharpest expression of this critical interpretation is found in a Corpus Christi sermon on John 6.1 Luther there protests against connecting this passage of Scripture with the sacrament. The argument runs: ‘However true it is that the sacrament is real food, yet it is no help at all to him who does not receive it in his heart by faith. For it makes nobody religious or believing but demands that he be religious and believing beforehand.’2 On the contrary the eating and drinking of which John 6 speaks is from the beginning ‘nothing else but believing on the Lord Christ who has given his flesh and blood in our behalf’. That eating is done ‘in the heart and not with the mouth. Eating in the heart does not deceive, but eating with the mouth, that deceives. Eating with the mouth has an end, but the other eating continues forever without ceasing.’3 What is ‘profitable’ is not the physical eating of the flesh but ‘the believing that this bread is the flesh of God’s Son’.4 In every way the festival preacher is declaring war against the festival of the sacramental object, Corpus Christi, which brought him to the pulpit. There was no other festival to which he was so opposed. He would like to advise that it be wholly abolished, for to him it was the most pernicious festival of the whole year.5

These were ideas which Luther expressed without restraint before the beginning of the disputes on the Lord’s Supper. Here belongs especially the well-known passage from the Corpus Christi sermon of 1519: ‘Be careful! You need to be concerned with the spiritual body of Christ rather than with the natural; and faith in the spiritual is more needed than faith in the natural. For the natural without the spiritual is of no use in this sacrament.’6 Or ‘the sacrament in itself without faith does nothing; yea God himself, who does all things, does not and cannot do good to any man unless he believes in him firmly. Still less can the sacrament do anything.’7 Or ‘not the sacraments but faith at the sacraments makes alive and justifies. Wherefore many take the sacrament and yet do not thereby become alive and truly religious. But he who believes is godly and lives.’1

With the word believe Luther has also answered the question of the right fitness (dispositio) and of the right preparation (praeparatio) for partaking of the sacrament, and of the right use (usus) of it. It is clear that with this answer, questions arising out of the practice of penance2 acquire a wholly new character. The problem of man’s attitude to the gift is transformed into that of his attitude to the giver. Without faith in God or Christ, the Giver, the gift is not given—even though the gift be God himself.3 ‘It does nothing but harm if it is only a “work done” (opus operatum); it must be a “work of doing” (opus operantis)’, which Luther interprets as ‘it must be used in faith’.4 Later he will no longer employ this formulation, for ‘faith is not a work, but the teacher (magister) and life of works’.5 But in the same writing in which this sentence occurs Luther also said: ‘Let him who is to approach the altar … beware lest he appear empty before the Lord God. But he will be empty if does not have faith.’6

What that ‘work of doing’ meant was that faith in the Giver asserts a claim on the whole man, predicates a taking possession of the whole man; and this is not denied but affirmed by calling faith ‘the life and teacher of works’. In this context, both before and after 1520, we find the very centre of Luther’s concept of faith. ‘Take heed that thou becomest another person, or do not go’ must be said to the communicant. Otherwise ‘there is not much difference between giving a man the holy sacrament and shoving it down the throat of a sow. It is a mockery and a dishonouring of the sacrament.’7

But what does it mean to believe, not to come empty, to become a different person? The best beginning for an answer is the genuine, early-Luther definition: ‘The best fitness (dispositio) is truly that thou art worst fitted; and contrarywise thou art worst fitted when thou art best fitted. But this is to be understood as meaning that when thou feelest thyself most miserable and most in need of grace, even so, by that very fact, thou art capable of receiving grace and art especially fitted for the sacrament. Again, more than thou fearest death and hell, do not imagine thyself fit and worthy as if thou wert to bring to God a clean heart—that clean heart must be asked for by thee and must be received by thee. The statement of Matthew 9:12 stands firm and inviolable.… He is thy God and needs not thy goods; but he is generous with his goods to thee, and he comes to thee with the purpose of giving thee his goods.’1 And further, ‘if the man realizes that he is not offering an empty, hungry and thirsty soul to God, and that he does not go the sacrament with a sufficient faith, and moreover, that he cannot do such a thing rightly (as every man in truth will realize, if he will examine and understand himself), then that man must not be ashamed nor afraid to pray according to Luke 17:5; Mark 9:42’.2

The right ‘preparation’ is therefore just the painful recognition that we lack the right ‘fitness’. This recognition, the faith which so to speak leaps into the very gap where there is no faith, is the faith which receives the gift, because that faith is directed towards the Giver. If the Devil ‘winks’ at thee to tell thee that thou art unworthy of the sacrament, ‘just cross thyself and cease worrying over worthiness and unworthiness; only take heed that thou believest.… Faith makes worthy; doubt makes unworthy.’3

‘The sacrament is given only to those who need comfort and strength, who have a timid heart, who carry a frightened conscience, who suffer from the assault of sins or have fallen under it. What can it do for the free, confident spirits who neither need nor desire it?’4 ‘This is what Paul also means when he says, let every man examine himself and then eat of this bread. For the man who rightly examines himself, who forgets the wickedness of other men and does not judge them, but who knows concerning himself that he labours and is heavy laden with many sins and transgressions, will then be greedy for the grace and help of Christ. For as St Augustine says, “the food seeks none except a hungry and empty soul; it flees none but the full and proud who judge and condemn one another, as those would do of whom the Apostle wrote these words.” For if by these words the apostle had required of us that we should examine ourselves until we were certain that we were without deadly sin, he would have laid upon us an impossible requirement and wholly deprived us of the holy sacrament. Therefore it is enough, if thou dost not know of a deadly sin of a specific, gross kind, or of a certain intention to commit a deadly sin. Leave what may lie in the background to the grace of God and let thy faith be thy cleanness; then thou art sure.’1 The sacrament will be received by those ‘who know their transgression, who feel that they are not good and yet would gladly become good. Therefore it all depends on so feeling (on knowing one’s self to have sinned), for in truth all of us transgress and are sinners; but not all so confess.’2

The ‘fitness’ (dispositio) achieved by such ‘preparation’ is therefore the ‘becoming another man’ which must precede the use of the sacrament (not first follow it) in order that the believer may receive in it the ‘testament’, the effective promise of the forgiveness of sins. This capacity (capacitas) can only be compared to an empty, outstretched hand. That it shall not be unused is provided for by word and sign. There is needed only the third component, man’s concurring affirmation that ‘as the words of Christ declare, so it is in truth’. (‘For where God speaks and reveals, there man must believe with a wholly firm heart that the truth is as he speaks and reveals; so that we do not hold him to be a liar and a juggler, but to be faithful and true.’)3

So these three components are interwoven: (1) The ‘fitness’ of man (negative), the recognition of a lack; (2) the truth of God’s promise, offered in Word and sign; (3) the impossibility, recognized by man, that God could lie, the faith, which is counted by God ‘as a fundamental, sufficient piety for blessedness’,4 the faith which receives the sacrament. The essential one of the three is unquestionably for Luther the second—neither the negative fitness nor the positive effect which are on man’s side, but the divine promise. ‘For where the Word of God who promises is, there is of necessity the faith of the man who accepts. Therefore it is clear that the beginning of our salvation is faith which depends on the Word of God who promises, who comes to us, in his free and undeserved mercy, without any effort of ours, and offers the Word of his promise.… The Word of God is first of all; faith follows it and charity follows faith.’5

But this does not exclude, on the contrary it includes as corollary that the third point (believing God to be true) involves a most direct and immediate claim upon men. And it is upon that claim that Luther in this connexion will enlarge particularly. Not as if faith were again to become a kind of work—a most inward, most refined human act of conscience, penitence, and obedience. Certainly not! ‘Be thy remorse and thy true or false(!) penitence what it will, attend most earnestly to this, that thou go to the sacrament trusting in the Word of Christ our Beloved Lord, which is there repeated. For if thou so goest, thou wilt be illuminated and thy countenance will not fall nor be ashamed. Thou canst not possibly in any way succeed in making the blessed mother of God a liar; and she said (Luke 1:53), the Lord has filled the hungry with good things.…’1 But just this ‘therefore so go’ (in view of the questionable character of even our most sincere wanting and desiring) makes a requirement of men, without which the sacrament, or even God himself can effect ‘nothing at all’. It asserts a claim upon men as certainly as the promise announced in the sacrament is its prerequisite.

There is also another thing (not really a different thing) which must be added. ‘Christ does not say to us, see, there it is, there it lies; but he says, take, it is to be thine. It is therefore not consistent with the nature of the sacrament that we should keep it lying there for we must use it. Now there is no other right use except that thou believest that this body was given for thee and this blood shed for thee. So thou hast it as thou believest.’2 And already before 1520 he wrote: ‘How does it help that thou picturest to thyself and believest that death, sin, hell are overcome in Christ for others, if thou dost not also believe that thy death, thy sin, thy hell are overcome for thee and destroyed and that therefore thou art redeemed? The sacrament indeed would be worth nothing if thou dost not believe the very thing which is there revealed, given and promised to thee.’3 But even a year earlier Luther had thought it necessary to counteract this stress on the second person singular and offer the following assurance: ‘If thou art still weak in faith (and that nullifies all other “preparation”),4 learn that last remedy of the weak and allow thyself to be nourished like an infant in the arms and bosom of mother Church, yes on the bed of the paralytic, that the Lord may at least see their faith when there is none of thine; that thou mayest approach in the faith either of the universal Church or of a believing man known to thee and mayest say boldly to the Lord Jesus, Behold me, Lord Jesus Christ; I grieve that I am so weak that I believe not at all, or so little, in thine inestimable love toward us. Accept me therefore in the faith of thy Church and of this or that man. For however it be with me, it is required, O Lord, that I obey thy Church which orders me to come. In obedience at least I come, if I bring nothing else. Then believe firmly that thou dost not come unworthily. There is no doubt that he will accept obedience given to the Church as to himself. Then it cannot be that the faith of the Church will permit thee to perish any more than the babe who is rightly baptized and saved by the faith of others.’1

This last idea, like that cited on the opus operantis (‘work of doing’)2 was for obvious reasons not offered in this form later. From 1520 on, we find the bluntest antithesis: ‘Thou canst not depend on the faith of another when thou approachest the sacrament. Each one must believe for himself, as each one is also required to fight for himself against sin, Satan and the world.’3 The question remains whether this antithesis is more than dialectic, whether it is wholly dropped or whether here ‘an obvious remnant of the Catholic point of view’4 is still to be found. In 1519 Luther writes: ‘Whether I be worthy or not, I am a member of Christianity.’5 And against the vehement ‘each one for himself’ stands all which he said later of the character of the Lord’s Supper as ‘communion’.6 Not to the individual as such, but to Christianity, to the Church, the properly instituted sacrament was intrusted. This is for Luther axiomatic.7

The requirement of personal faith and the reliance on the faith of the Church are correlatives, not mutually exclusive antitheses. A final undialectic word on true faith is to be found when Luther writes: ‘See to it that thou dost not make for thyself a false faith when thou merely believest that Christ is there given thee and is thine. If thy faith is only a human idea which thou hast set up, remain away from this sacrament. For the faith must be a faith which God creates; thou must know and feel that God has wrought such a faith in thee that thou therefore holdest it to be indubitably true that this sign is given to thee and thou art therefore become so brave that thou thinkest to thyself thou art willing to die for it. And if thou art still wavering and doubting, then kneel down and pray God that he impart to thee grace to escape from thyself and to come to the true, created faith.’8

How deeply in earnest Luther was in this critical interpretation of the concept of sacrament from the standpoint of faith is shown in the practical conclusions which he drew from it (at least in theory). He opposed strongly a general, required, conventional attendance of the Lord’s Supper. ‘A Christian on compulsion is a very cheerful, pleasant guest in the kingdom of heaven; God has a particular pleasure in such and will put him at once below the angels where hell is deepest.’1 The man who does not come ‘from his own conscience and from the hunger of his soul’ Luther earnestly advises to stay away, even with the risk that in future ‘scarcely one will go where now many hundreds go’.2

In addition, after 1523, he develops the proposal of testing the communicants. ‘On this account, it should henceforth be arranged that no one is allowed to go to the sacrament unless he be questioned beforehand and it be ascertained how his heart stands, whether he knows what the sacrament is and why he comes to it’; whether he is ‘such a vessel that he can contain it and whether he knows how to witness to his faith.’ Luther would like to bring it about that ‘in the church service, the true believers could be given a separate place together and so be distinguished from the others. I would gladly have done it long ago, but it would not have been allowed since it has not yet been preached and urged sufficiently.’ There is necessarily a difference between preaching and the distribution of the sacrament. ‘When I preach the Gospel, I do not know who is reached by it; but I ought to be sure that it has reached him who comes to the sacrament. Therefore I must not act at random, but be certain that he to whom I give the sacrament has received the Gospel.’3 And in the Rule of Mass and Communion for the Church of Wittenberg there was actually included a requirement that the communicants had to present themselves once a year to the episcopus. They were to report (1) on their knowledge of the nature and use of the Lord’s Supper; (2) on their purpose in their previous participation in it; but also (3), because Satan could also answer these two questions, on their life and morals (vita et mores) in relation to their faith. According to the result, the episcopus is then to admit them or to keep them back on account of their ignorance or their unrepented unworthiness.4

So strongly critical had the concept of faith become that Luther had almost—become Calvin. That he did not, but remained Luther, must chiefly be explained on other grounds than the merely ‘historical’.

Only believe means receive, have, enjoy what is given in ‘Word and sign’. But this statement, like the one quoted above, ‘only the Word makes the sacrament’, can be given a more positive expression, ‘Faith means receive, have …’, and it is in such positive expression that Luther’s meaning and intention become clear. But it is more difficult to understand how far he is certain of faith’s receiving than how far he is certain of an act of the Word. If we turn to consider the subjective side of the problem, we find presented a veritable plethora of obviously preliminary observations, which show indeed the direction in which Luther was searching, but have nothing to do with the actual answer which he found.

In what does that which man through faith receives in the sacrament really consist? That is the question. During those years, Luther plainly laboured to distinguish what was so received by giving it a special character within faith in general. If this effort was not wholly fruitless, then the preliminary assumption must be made that the effect on us resulting from the Lord’s Supper is not merely a repetition of the general gift of God tendered to us in Christ but something specific within this general experience, either a specific object or a specific receiving or both at once and combined.

The matter of particularity was already present in the concept of the Word.1 It lay close to Luther’s assumptions entirely to repudiate such a particularity. But there is no such repudiation. ‘Believe, says Augustine, and you have eaten. But what is to be believed there except the “Word” of promise? So I can daily, hourly have Mass, while as often as I wish I can set before myself the words of Christ and nourish and strengthen my faith on them; that is truly to eat and drink spiritually.’2 It might be, as Luther in the same year conceded, that everyone could, when on the march, have such a faith in Christ, consigning to him at need prayer and praise that he may carry them to God in heaven, and that in so doing a man may think upon the sacrament and the testament and sincerely desire, and may therefore partake of it spiritually.… What, then, is the need of having Mass in the Church? Answer: It is true that such faith is enough and truly suffices wholly, but …3 This but is essential to complete the answer. And such statements serve only to stress the critical (that is the fundamental) significance of ‘faith’. Their quintessence is compressed in the sentence: ‘Without the physical partaking of the sacraments (provided they are not despised) one can become godly through faith; but without faith, no sacrament helps; rather it is of all things most deadly and destructive.’1 But here the parenthesis already makes it plain that eating and drinking with the mouth is the rule which is merely established by the exception and remains no less essential.

There are six arguments, if I judge rightly, which Luther offered in support of the particular significance of the external and actual celebration of the Lord’s Supper.

1. He pointed to the divine institution of the rite, the honouring of which would be in itself alone sufficient reason for holding the ‘material Mass’.2

2. He asked how, without the material act, such a faith as is truly effective can be attained; whether we are at all capable of ruling ourselves in spirit; whether it is not necessary for us to come together and be mutually enkindled to such a faith by physically seeing and receiving the testament.3

3. ‘Nor ought that to be omitted; but rather great care must be taken so that the memorial of Christ’s passion be not omitted. For the Lord gave direction that this ceremony is to be celebrated only in memory of him. Therefore it can be omitted only if you wish to give up the memory of him.’4 Luther can on occasion paraphrase the words of institution: ‘[I] leave you this sacrament forever, for a sure and true sign that you do not forget me but use it daily and remind yourselves of what I have done and do for you.’5 He could even compare the institution of the Lord’s Supper with the Catholic custom of binding the heirs in a will to hold celebrations and requiems for the benefit of the dead testator. ‘So therefore Christ has established a celebration of himself in this testament, not because he had need of it, but because it is necessary and profitable for us to so think of him and be thereby strengthened in faith.’6 In this sense the Lord’s Supper can at times be called ‘the memorial sign of the promise’.7 And in the homiletic exposition of this point of view, Luther could go so far as to say: ‘If thou wilst now become a God-maker, come hither, listen. He will teach thee the way … not that thou art to make his divine nature, for that is and remains ever the same and uncreated; but that thou canst make him God for thyself, that he become true God to thee, to thee, to thee, as he is to himself true God. But the way is this … “This do in remembrance of me”.’1

4. This brings us to the fourth argument. ‘Christ in commanding that this be done by us in memory of him plainly desires nothing else than that the promise with his pledge be constantly repeated for the nourishing and strengthening of faith which can never be strengthened enough.’ Through constant renewal of the memory of God’s sweet and rich promise, the spirit becomes so to speak more ‘sturdy’ and ‘well nourished’ (saginatur!) in faith.2

What Luther understands by such strengthening of faith he has once stated in highly Platonic terms, but in noteworthy tension with his second argument. It is necessary that the love, communion, and presence of Christ be hidden, invisible, and spiritual while the sign only is material, visible, external. Otherwise we would not rise to faith. It is necessary that ‘all temporal and sensible things fall away and that we be wholly weaned from them if we are to come to God. To that end the sacrament serves. [It is for us] a ford, a bridge, a door, a boat and a litter in which and by means of which we journey from this world into eternal life. Therefore all depends on faith. For he who does not believe is like the man who must cross water and is so fearful that he does not trust the boat and must therefore remain where he is, and can never more be blessed because he does not embark and cross. For the man who relies on his senses and fails to exercise his faith, the result is that the crossing of the Jordan of death will be bitter.’3

5. Christ instituted the Lord’s Supper with the purpose ‘that it be like a badge or label by which Christians are distinguished from others; therefore as an opportunity to confess Christ’. Luther stresses the need to know who and where the Christians are ‘in whom the Gospel now brings forth its fruits’.4 The communion of the Lord’s Supper is ‘a part of the confession of faith in which they confess before God, angels and men’. The communicants have to take special places at the service to identify themselves; they must be what they are openly not secretly (furtim!).5

6. Unlike preaching, but like confession, the sacrament has the advantage ‘that the Word is directed to thee personally. For in the sermon the Word is sent forth to the community and even though it touches thee, yet thou art not so certain of it. But here it can touch no one but thyself alone. Must thou not be sincerely glad, if thou knowest a place where God wishes to speak with thee thyself?’1