The Mode of Christ’s Presence in the Supper (08 Nov 2023)

0:01 It would seem that some controversy has arisen with regard to the mode of Christ's presence in the supper. Now those who are engaging in this controversy, and in this case I mean stoking it, starting the controversy where there is none, are doing so in bad faith. On top of doing it in bad faith, they are doing it foolishly twice over, once because it is foolish to engage in such a controversy in the way they are, and twice because they do not understand the terms they are employing, because they do not have access to the original language of the Book of Concord to see what those terms actually are, or the original language of the philosophical and theological terms being employed. No Now of course you do not have to know the languages

0:52 to employ the terms, but it would behoove you to actually know what the terms mean, which is very clearly not the case here. At any rate, the quote that comes up is not actually in Article 7, but in Article 8 of the Epitome of the Formula of Concord. It is paragraph 17. So here it is it is the German actually I will just read the entire paragraph. The Her Erf Vermag und ihm ganz leicht ist, Zeinen Wahtign Laib, Unblut im Heiligen Abendmahl gegenwärtig mitzuteilen, nicht nach der Art oder Eigenschaft der menschlichen Natur, sondern nach Art und Eigenschaft göttlicher Rechte, sagt Dr. Luther aus unserem christlichen Kinderglauben, welche Gegenwart nicht Irdisch, noc gepernatanisch, gleichwohl wahrhaftig und wesentlich ist, wie die Wort seines

1:58 Testaments lauten, das ist, ist, ist mein Leib, und so weiter. Now the part of that is relevant for this issue here is the bit that says Nichtish. Iidish is the term that is being mistranslated as physical. Idish Alfdeutsch does not mean physical, it means earthly, mundane, terrestrial. Now, that is a paletic against the Reformed. That is what's actually happening in this paragraph. It is a polemic against the polemic the reformed often leverage against Lutherans, which is their accusation that we are cannibals, of course. Now that term Edish, as I said, does not mean physical. If we wanted physical, that would be Kerpelish, or Leiplish since you've

3:03 got the word Lip there in the quote from Luther. The other term that comes up is the Latin term localiter. That is one of the terms over which we fought with the Reformed and still do to this day, although often the fights now are not in Latin. Localiter also does not mean physical. It means local or locally. When we say that we do not hold to a localiter understanding of Christ's presence in the supper, what we are saying is that we reject the accusation of the reformed that we are cannibals. Because their accusation is blasphemous. They are calling Christ a liar, they are insulting the sacrament, and it should terrify them to speak those words, to even think those words. Now, what the actual Lutheran position is is this Christ

4:02 is physically, substantially, sacramentally present in with and under the bread and the wine in the supper. And he is so because he promises to be so. That is the Lutheran position. To say that Lutherans do not hold that Christ is physically present is a lie. At the absolute best, it is a reckless misunderstanding of the meaning of the terms being used in the Book of Concord, in our dogmaticians, in our theologians. It is to deliberately, quite frankly, because there is a point at which recklessness, negligence rises to such a level that it is in fact intentional, it is in fact deliberate. And that is the case here because it is trivial to look up what the word Idish means, or what the word localiter means,

5:01 just drop them into any of the various places online where you can translate from one language to another, and it will spit out the accurate meaning of these terms for you. And that has clearly not been done by certain individuals who are engaging in this controversy. So again, this is the Lutheran position. Christ is physically, substantially, sacramentally present in, with, and under the bread and the wine, in the supper, as he promises.