# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 08 15_S202
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

202

2. it concerns those who partake of the holy Supper.

Dear reader, did you not know that beforehand? Did this wisdom have to be first drawn from a textbook? But what do you have when you ask yourself: Is it also true what the Small Catechism of Dr. Luth. says, that the sacrament of the altar is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, under the bread and wine, given us Christians to eat and to drink— ?

Then you find either nothing, or something worse than nothing. For the words which the author uses are

3. a concealed indication of his true meaning.

For he does not say:

What does Jesus assure to all those who partake of the holy Supper,

but he gives a circumscription of the communicants, and what kind?

He names them as those who in the holy Supper eat and drink bread and wine.

What kind of answer, then, follows if one asks: What, then, do they eat and drink in the holy Supper? None other than this:

Bread and wine.

And what follows from the fact that it is not indicated with a single syllable that it is not merely bread and wine that is received?

Nothing else than this,

that it is merely bread and wine.

Did you suspect that, dear reader? Certainly not; and yet it is the undeniable result, if one deals with the author's words as one must deal with a suspicious medicine. One separates the ingredients from one another, and either nothing suspicious is found or—to use the very mildest expression—what ought not to be found in it.

But the author's words offer still more. They are

4. an excuse for despisers of the Supper. For these can say: Christ has assured us nothing. Why not?—because we do not partake of the Supper at all. And why should He have assured these nothing?—because the Hannov. Cat. says, "Jesus assures it to all who in the holy Supper eat and drink bread and wine. Then those cannot be included who do not at all eat and drink either bread or wine in the holy Supper. Consequently the despisers of the Supper are not bound in their conscience by the assurance of Christ.

5. Over and above all this, the author's whole sentence is couched in the ambiguous word

"He assures"

This is now

a. one of those expressions so often recurring in the Hannov. Cat., such as: the Holy Scripture teaches, calls, ascribes, attributes, and so forth, whereby the confession is evaded. Had he not wished to evade it, he would have had to say:

What is eaten and drunk in the holy Supper under bread and wine, according to Christ's own assurance?

b. such a word as agrees with the manner of the Unionists, who, in order to let the Lutheran confession die out and unnoticed to make way for the Reformed doctrine, purposely use, in the distribution of the holy Supper, the words devoid of confession

"Christ says: this is, etc."

c. the clear proof that the author neither has, nor believes, nor can teach the Lutheran doctrine.

For what is at issue here is such an assurance as only he can give who is God. For a mere man cannot give his flesh and blood to be eaten and drunk under bread and wine, though he would. Only he can do it who is true God and also true man in one Person.

Now whoever does not believe that Christ is God cannot believe either that Christ in the holy Supper can give His flesh and blood to be eaten and drunk.

Now the author nowhere professes faith in the Godhead of Christ, although he had not only opportunity for it but also obligation. Why does he not do so, if he really believed? A justification for this reserved and thoroughly suspicious language of the author can never be produced, but well an explanation, and it is called: unbelief.

What follows from this for the word of Christ "this is my body—this is my blood"?

1. If Christ is not God, His assurance cannot be a divine one.

2. If Christ is not God, then Christ has either spoken foolishly, or the doctrine of the Lutheran Church must be false. For this doctrine does not tolerate doubtfulness concerning the Godhead of Christ, any more than an undecided treatment of the words of the Testament of Christ.

3. If Christ is not God, then no man is to be blamed who with the words "is," "body," "this" does what he will.

Thus not merely one deviation, but all possible deviations from the pure doctrine are given door and gate.

Is this, now, the good Lutheran instruction which you, dear reader, supposed yourself to have received in the Hannov. Cat.?

But—it will be objected to us—how does it read immediately in the following questions?

1. How does the Apostle Paul explain himself?

2. Of what do we become partakers, and that in the holy Supper? together with the answer "of the body and blood," etc.

Then all these charges are laid low at one stroke.

To this we answer:

Against the word of the Apostle Paul we have not the least to object. But if the orthodoxy of the author were to be proved from it, the question would have to run thus:

Who further testifies the essential presence of the body and blood of Christ in the holy Supper

whereupon the answer would fit

The Apostle Paul, when he says, 1 Cor. 10, 16.

"The cup of blessing," etc.

But whether the author meant to cite this passage as proof of the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the holy Supper, that is what we deny

1. because it does not agree with the confessionless and faithless manner of the author in general.

2. because in Qu. 23, where he cites the words of institution, he knows so admirably how to evade the main point.

3. because he has the passage of Paul follow immediately upon it,—evidently in order to justify his empty, hollow, bare and insipid dismissal of the words of institution (if that were possible).

4. because the question about the passage of Paul is not so framed that the false interpretations would be refuted or forestalled.

5. because that passage is held by the opponents of the Lutheran doctrine to be their strongest weapon.

It may be asked what in all the world the author could have wanted to prove other than the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the holy Supper, as if for the spirit of error no room were left. Not only on this, and what is to be replied to it from the Lutheran side, but also "with regard to the word partaker," which the author uses in the following question, our still unantiquated Luther relieves us of further explanation. Whoever wishes to be instructed, let him read the Supplement.

It suffices us to remark that when anyone cites a proof text he must want to prove something. If it is not the right thing—and this the author does not state—then nothing remains but something false. But if that remains, then what we have remarked on Qu. 28 is not only not weakened, but still more confirmed.

(To be continued.)

Conference work of Mr. Barthling, sent in according to a resolution of the Chicago Conference.—

Schedule of Hours

for a German Lutheran Parish School.

It is undoubtedly a very difficult task for the teacher so to arrange his instruction, when the number of pupils is rather large and their ages are different, that no children are favored or neglected, but all are duly exerted and