Luther Archives - Page 2 of 9

September 9, 2024September 9, 2024

“I Am With You Always”: Christ’s Absolute Presence with Us

Confessional Lutheran Christology Part II

Martin Luther [steadfastly defended the substantial presence of Christ’s Body and Blood in the Lord’s Supper against other reformers like Ulrich Zwingli.] Luther responded to Zwingli in part by teaching the absolute omnipresence of Christ’s human nature. This doctrine is sometimes incorrectly called “Ubiquity.”¹ As Luther notes, the Bible teaches that Christ is at the “right hand of God.” But this is not a physical location (i.e., a semi-local heaven, as Zwingli had taught). Rather, God’s right hand refers to rather his power and glory, which are everywhere.¹

Hence, Jesus’s body is, in some mysterious sense, everywhere. However, Luther emphasized that Christ’s body does not exist everywhere in the form of infinite multiplication or spatial extension (hence, the inaccuracy of the term “Ubiquity,” which implies spatial extension).³ Rather, Luther drew on Gabriel Biel’s distinction among the various presences bodies can have (local/circumscribed, definitive, and repletive)⁴ Following Biel, Luther affirmed Jesus can exercise multiple modes of presence, including a repletive presence, or divine omnipresence.

Logically, since Jesus is at the right hand of God, he is in some incomprehensible and supernatural sense present at all places as true man.⁵ Beyond the fact that Christ sits at the right hand of God, Luther also argued that if Christ was not omnipresent according to his humanity, his two natures would be divided. The consequent Christology would contradict the Chalcedonian definition:

Wherever this person is, it is a single indivisible person, and if you can say, ‘Here is God,’ then you must also say, ‘Christ the man is present too.’ And if you could show me one place where God is and not the man, the person is already divided and I could at once say truthfully, ‘Here is God who is not man and has never become man.’ But no God like that for me!⁶

September 5, 2024September 5, 2024

Stuck in the Middle: Between “Nestorian” and “Eutychian” Reformers

Confessional Lutheran Christology Part I

When it comes to Luther’s Christology and that of the subsequent Lutheran tradition, we must tread a fine line between the Scylla of claiming the Reformer was an absolute innovator and the Charybdis of claiming there was no meaningful difference between Luther and his medieval predecessors. There are, in fact, some interesting differences between confessional Lutheran teaching and the previous medieval tradition. However, the Lutheran Reformers were faithful students of Scripture and the ancient Church. Discontinuities existed between Lutherans and their medieval predecessors because the Reformers drew out the logic of biblical and patristic Christology. The seeming innovations of Lutheran theologians regarding the metaphysics of the Incarnation were, in fact, valid extensions of enhypostasis-anhypostasis Christology, sometimes termed “Neo-Chalcedonianism.”¹

Throughout his career, Luther fought on the same two fronts that the ancient Church had. Like the early orthodox Church Fathers, Luther found himself combating both Nestorian and Eutychian Christological tendencies. As we will see below, in Luther’s mind, the Swiss Reformer Ulrich Zwingli played the role of Nestorius. Kaspar Schwenckfeld played the role of Eutychus. Most popular accounts of Luther focus on the Reformer’s conflict with Ulrich Zwingli and his belief that Zwingli was essentially Nestorian. Sadly, this tends to distort the truly balanced nature of the Reformer’s Christology (i.e., rejecting both Nestorian and Eutychian tendencies), and therefore undercuts his continuity with the earlier tradition.

Luther’s Conflict with Zwingli and “Nestorianism”

The major source of strife between Luther and Zwingli was the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper.² We will return to this conflict again in a future chapter, but it is worth touching on here because there was a Christological issue at the heart of the Reformers’ debate over the Eucharist. Zwingli, following an undercurrent in medieval theology, argued that there could be no substantial presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper because, as true man, he could not be present in multiple locations simultaneously.

August 25, 2024August 25, 2024

In, With, and Under: Sacramental Union, Not Transubstantiation

Holy Scripture clearly affirms the substantial presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. Yet, throughout the history of the Church, theologians have explained this presence in different ways. In Western Christendom before the Reformation, transubstantiation became the standard doctrine. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 dogmatized transubstantiation as official and infallible Church teaching. The Council of Trent reaffirmed transubstantiation after the Reformation was underway.

Luther On Transubstantiation

*Martin Luther distributing Holy Communion*

Martin Luther took a different approach. In On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Luther rejected transubstantiation, while still allowing that it could be accepted as a theologoumena. Although he later became more opposed to the doctrine, Luther was never as hostile to transubstantiation as he was to the sacramental teaching of the southern Reformers. This was largely because although transubstantiation is a misguided account of the substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist, it nevertheless affirms the core biblical teaching that Jesus is present in the elements of the Lord’s Supper.

July 26, 2024July 27, 2024

Eternal Election Through Temporal Word and Sacrament Ministry

Throwback Post

The divine power and sacramentality of the word of justification raises the issue of predestination. We will discuss this question in greater detail on the basis of Luther’s answer in The Bondage of the Will (1525) in a future chapter. Here it is important briefly to note how Luther deals with the issue in light of his doctrine of the sacramentality of the gospel.

Although Luther comments on predestination somewhat infrequently, he does have a clear doctrine of predestination derived from engagement with St. Paul and St. Augustine of Hippo.¹ Nevertheless, unlike Augustine, Luther describes election as executed by God in and through the preaching of the promise in Christ. In a passage in “A Sermon on Preparing for Dying” (1519) Luther writes:

Therefore fix your eyes upon the heavenly picture of Christ, who for your sake went to hell and was rejected by God as one damned to the eternal perdition, as He cried on the cross, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?” Behold, in that picture your hell is overcome and your election assured, so that if you but take care and believe that it happened for you, you will certainly be saved in that faith.²

July 23, 2024July 22, 2024

Mystical Union by Faith: Vows Before Consummation

Throwback Post

According to Martin Luther, the believer receives all that is Christ’s , through faith in the word: “The one who has faith is a completely divine man, a son of God, the inheritor of the universe. He is victor over the world, sin, death, and the Devil.”¹ The scholastics claimed that the habitus of love makes faith living. But Luther argued this was incorrect. Love is not the “form” (in the Aristotelian sense) of faith. Christ is.² Faith holds Christ like a ring holds onto a jewel.³

In other words, because faith takes its reality from Christ and his alien righteousness, it lives on and subjectively justifies the sinner. As Lutheran theologian Regin Prenter observed: “Faith lives completely and alone by the real presence of Christ. To the same extent that Christ is really present, faith is really present, and only to that extent.”⁴ Moreover, to use the terminology of later Protestantism, Luther believed the Word of God and the saving faith it creates did not simply justify believers. It sanctifies them as well. Here the Reformer echoed Jeremiah’s description of the Holy Spirit working through the proclamation of the New Covenant to write the commandments on the hearts of believers (Jer. 31:33).

Luther’s Use of Aristotle

Luther clearly rejected the medieval Church’s belief that habits implanted in the soul sanctified the Christian. However, interestingly, he did not totally abandon the language of formation taken from Peripatetic philosophy. Nevertheless, instead of using Aristotle’s concept of ethical formation through habits (i.e., augmentation of human agency and right performance), Luther used Aristotelian epistemology’s concept of objects of consciousness imposing their form on the knower’s intellect.