Zwingli Archives - Jack Kilcrease

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.

June 16, 2024June 16, 2024

Baptize Your Babies: The Bible Tells You So

When considering infant baptism, we must remember that baptism is an effective visible Word of God. Indeed, St. Paul tells us that baptism objectively kills and resurrects us in Christ (Rom. 6:2-10). Sin is fundamentally unbelief (Rom. 14:23), and faith is new life (Gal. 2:20).¹ In other words, just as the preaching office does, baptism enacts the law and gospel on our old person.² It is the visible form of the word of law and the gospel, which, as Paul reminds us elsewhere, objectively works death and life: “For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor. 3:6).

Hence, the argument that infants cannot repent and believe makes little sense since repentance and faith are not natural capacities in human after the Fall. Rather, they are the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit operating through baptism.³ Moreover, we have a very concrete biblical example of the Holy Spirit working faith even in fetuses. St. John the Baptizer recognized the Christ while still in the womb of Elizabeth (Lk 1:44).⁴ Jesus himself states that it is not by active and conscious decision that one becomes a Christian, but rather by receiving faith and the kingdom as a “little child” (Mk. 10:15).

February 2, 2022February 8, 2022

Luther On Christ’s Substantial Eucharistic Presence For You

The gospel is a unilateral divine self-donation, in that an unconditional promise means a gift of the promiser himself in order to fulfill the terms of the promise. Therefore, Christians who receive the unilateral promise of the gospel are heirs to Christ’s very sacrificed person as a guarantee that he is at their disposal to fulfill his promise. This means that through the promise of the gospel we inherit Christ and everything that he possesses. Indeed, as Paul states, all true believers in union with Christ are “fellow heirs with Christ” (Rom 8:17). This reality is manifest in the Lord’s Supper wherein Christ wills his very physical being (body and blood) through which he brought salvation to believers. Therefore, to paraphrase Luther, in dying Jesus gives the inheritance of his body and blood to believers in order that they might receive the forgiveness of sins and eternal life through his promise attached to them.¹

Returning to On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Luther’s second major difficulty with the medieval conception of the Eucharist is the doctrine of transubstantiation.² The doctrine of transubstantiation teaches that the bread and the wine in the Lord’s Supper are transformed by the words of institution into the body and blood of Christ, although the outward appearance and qualities of bread and wine (Aristotelian “accidents”) remain intact.³ Although Luther affirmed the substantial presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist, he disliked the doctrine of transubstantiation the because it contradicts 1 Corinthians 10:16 which states that the bread and wine remain in the Lord’s Supper as the medium by which one receives Christ’s substantial body and blood.⁴ Luther considers the entire idea of transubstantiation an Aristotelian rationalization of the mystery of how the body and blood of Christ can become present through the bread and the wine.⁵

March 8, 2021March 8, 2021

Luther on Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist

Although Luther affirmed the substantial presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist, he disliked the doctrine of transubstantiation because it contradicts 1 Corinthians 10:16 which states that the bread and wine remain in the Lord’s Supper as the medium by which one receives Christ’s substantial body and blood.^[1] Luther considers the entire idea of transubstantiation an Aristotelian rationalization of the mystery of how the body and blood of Christ can become present through the bread and the wine.^[2]

In spite of this criticism of transubstantiation, it is interesting to note that Luther does not consider belief in the doctrine to be tremendously problematic and allows that people could still affirm transubstantiation as a theologoumenon.^[3] What is most important to the Reformer is that one affirms the substantial presence of Christ’s flesh and blood in the Lord’s Supper. Although how one conceptually achieves this mysteriously physical presence is not unimportant, the main point for Luther is that one knows that Christ is substantially present in his body and blood “for you” (pro me).^[4]

This is why Luther was considerably less tolerant when it comes to the sacramental symbolicism of a figure like Zwingli.^[5] From Luther’s perspective, Zwingli ignores the divine promise that Christ’s flesh and blood will be present on essentially rationalistic grounds, namely, that physical bodies cannot be at more than one location at once. As we have seen Luther rejects this logic and affirms that Jesus’ body remains a real body. However, it participates in God’s glory and can transcended the normal boundaries of physicality.^[6] After all, in the resurrection Jesus was able to walk through walls and appear and disappear at will. Jesus’ body nevertheless remained a real body. Christ could still invite Thomas to place his fingers in the nail holes of his very real hands and eat fish with the apostles. Likewise, the mysterious supernatural quality of Christ’s body in the Lord’s Supper does not negate its real physicality or his genuine humanity.

As we noted earlier, these differences between Luther and Zwingli on the sacrament are due in part to competing concepts of the communicatio idiomatum.^[7] Nevertheless, these differences also have implications regarding the nature of how the Word of God functions. For Zwingli, the words of institution are signifiers that merely signify.^[8] Zwingli resolves the puzzle of how the signifiers “body and blood” can be validly applied to the signified “bread and wine” (which they do not match) through sacramental symbolicism.^[9] For Luther, divine words are not mere signifiers, but promises that effect what they speak.^[10] This is the same principle that we have seen earlier in his views of confession and absolution. Hence the words “this is my body . . . this is my blood” possess divine power to bring about the presence of Christ’s flesh and blood.^[11] Faith must simply trusts that God’s words perform what they promise. To believe otherwise would be to trust in human reason over the God’s clearly stated promises.^[12]

[1] LW 36:33-4.

[2] LW 36:34-5.

[3] LW 36:35.

[4] Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, trans. Robert Schultz (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 379.

[5] Lohse, Martin Luther’s Theology, 169-77; Sasse, This is My Body, 134-294.

[6] Thomas Davis, This Is My Body: The Presence of Christ in Reformation Thought (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 41-64; Sasse, This is My Body, 148-60.

[7] Sasse, This is My Body, 148-54.

[8] See discussion in: Aaron Moldenhauer, “Analyzing the Verba Christi: Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, and Gabriel Biel on the Power of Words,” in The Medieval Luther, ed. Christine Helmer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020), 53-6.

[9] Ulrich Zwingli, “On the Lord’s Supper,” in Zwingli and Bullinger, 175-238.

[10] Moldenhauer, “Analyzing the Verba Christi,” 57-61.

[11] LW 37:180-88.

[12] LW 37:131.

From the draft manuscript for Jack D. Kilcrease, Justification by Word (Lexham Press, forthcoming).