HERMANN SASSE
Around the Lords Table is gathered the church. At the
Table of the
Lord the church knows what it most profoundly is: the
body of Christ.
No doubt of this since the days of the apostles. Where
the Table of
the Lord is deserted, where the Lords Supper is no
longer known or
celebrated, there the church dies beyond rescue.
Inaccessible to rational explanation is the fact of this
connection
between the church and the Lords Supper, between the
body of Christ
which we are given at the altar and the body of Christ
which is the
church. All along their journey through nineteen
centuries
Christians have been enlivened by this fact. Here we may
find a clue
why in our days the Sacrament of the Altar has become a
matter of
such burning urgency. So it was also in the second third
of last
century, and perhaps not so again since the time of the
Reformation.
Where this connection between the church and the Lords
Supper still
holds, then the question of what the church is cannot be
faced
without the question what is the Lords Supper? Whether
the church
has a future is bound up with whether the Lords Supper
lives on
enliveningly. These are questions which Christians of all
churches
cannot but face as we move toward the end of the second
thousand
years. The question of the Lords Supper is not
something we may
just sit and think about; in all churches theology has
again
earnestly engaged the question of the Lords Supper.
When these questions are thus put, then they are surely
also put to
the Evangelical Lutheran Church. We have indeed ever and
again
maintained that we have Scriptural dimensions of what the
Lords
Supper is which in other churches have been blurred or
forgotten.
For us then the question of the Lords Supper probes to
the bottom of
our integrity whether we have held true to the Scriptural
Doctrine of
the Lords Supper, faithfully confessing, without
admixture, what our
Lord has given us to confess. Or have we exchanged this
for the mess
of potage offered by the Enlightenment in the way of
sacramental
theorizing.
You say, ‘I am rich, full up, and have need of nothing,
and do not
know that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and
naked. These
are the words of him who is the Lord and judge of all
Churches. If
we do not know ourselves to be struck by them we have
ceased to be a
Lutheran Church, a church of daily contrition and
repentance. Before
the judgment of these words we can only confess how
poverty-stricken
we have become. When first our Church made public
confession of the
faith, it was bold to say in Article 24 of the Augsburg
Confession:
Without boasting it is plain for all to see that the
Mass is
celebrated among us with greater devotion and more
earnestness than
among our opponents. Could we still say such a thing?
Has not our
Church participated in the grievous decline of the
Sacrament which
now for two hundred years has been spreading through the
world of
Protestantism? In many places the Sacrament has already
departed.
We are then confronted with the question what has become
of the
Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Altar? For our fathers
inextricably
bound up with the Doctrine was the celebration and
administration of
the Sacrament. Here doctrine is not some theoretical
doctrinalizing,
but the quickening message given the church to proclaim.
Still today
there are many pastors in the Evangelical Churches of
Germany who
confess the Doctrine of the Lords Supper as Luther did.
And there
are many Christian people who go to the Lords Table
confessing the
Sixth Chief Part of the Small Catechism. However, we may
not deceive
ourselves by supposing that this is true of anything more
than a
minority among our Evangelical people. We recognize this
fact
without laying any judgment on anybody else.
There is no denying that this situation is the outcome of
a long
historical development. This observation does not
relieve us of
responsibility. A generation ago who could have imagined
that the
question of the Sacrament could again become so fateful a
matter for
theology and church? If such a change is possible, then
a later
generation may perhaps marvel at how it was possible at
such a time
for there still to be even learned theologians who could
go on
talking about the Doctrine of the Lords Supper as
confessed by
Luther in such a shallow and dilettantist way? Still
today along the
highways and byways of theology you can hear talk of not
being bogged
down in the exegesis of the sixteenth century. If Luther
had the
benefit of the last generations advances in exegesis, he
would
certainly no longer teach of the Lords Supper as he did
back then.
When the recognition of what is going on here is joined
with the
basic respect due to a great man now departed, and so one
who can no
longer defend himself, there may then be a stirring of
effort to take
seriously and to understand what he said as he faced the
Last
Judgement.
If any one shall say after my death, If Luther were living now, he would teach or hold this or that article differently, for he did not consider it sufficiently, etc., let me say once and for all that by the grace of God I have most diligently traced all these articles through the Scriptures, have examined them again and again in the light thereof, and have wanted to defend all of them as certainly as I have now defended the sacrament of the altar...I know what I am saying, and I well realize what this will mean for me before the Last Judgment at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. (LW 37, 360f.)
If we grasp the import of these words, it follows that
what Luther
confesses as the freight of the Words of Institute can no
more be
relativized as outmoded exegesis than can that which he
confesses
with the Doctrine of Justification. This recognition
carries within
it what could bring in the day -- God grant it may come
before it is
too late -- the day of repentance, the day when we
Evangelical
theologians in Germany finally recognize what it is
perilous not to
recognize: the misuse of freedom in the Gospel. This may
be
recognized when any one of us claims it as his right to
follow his
own opinion, and put to the Christian congregation some
personal view
which has won his approval, which he recently read
somewhere or
other, and was much impressed by. This instead of
proclaiming what
we were pledged before God to proclaim in that most
solemn hour of
our lives at our ordination. Such misuse of freedom in
the Gospel
hastens the end of the Church of the Reformation.
The overwhelming majority of us were pledged to the
Lutheran Doctrine
of the Lords Supper because it is given us in Scripture.
This could
even be said of the clergy when the Prussian Union was
imposed. At
ordination we were committed to the confession of our
church against
which we would neither speak nor write privately nor in
the exercise
of the office (öffentlich). And this held so long as
were not
released from our vow. Pathetically hollow then is the
claim of
theological maturity by those who treat the confession of
our church
as if it were not something we pledged our loyalty to at
our
ordination. In the Church of the Lutheran Reformation we
hardly need
to speak against the notion that faithfulness to the
doctrine given
us by Scripture and confessed by the church is some sort
of bondage.
This was the faithfulness which brought Luther into his
Reformation
work.
The Lutheran theologians of Germany cannot but face up to
the poverty
and deprivation of their Church. Dilettantism and
subjectivism are
more than we can bear. By these the vital questions of
theology are
simply not engaged. First and vital engagement is with
the
straightforward statement of the doctrine confessed by
the church.
The more this is done, the more we in our century will be
part of the
great consensus (AC 1) of Lutheran doctrine, and so also
in that of
the Lords Supper.
We have in recent years been much at the receiving end of
being told
that there is not any more a Lutheran Church. The same
is said of
the Reformed, and even the pope himself has had to put up
with some
savant at his writing desk in Berlin who consigned the
Roman Catholic
Church to the cloud cuckooland of ideas. That our Church
has
disappeared we need fear no more than the murmurings in
the sixteenth
century about this Lutheranism and that Lutheranism.
Already at the
time when the Formula of Concord was taking shape we had
to hear such
things.
Our adversaries have had the effrontery to pretend and proclaim to the whole world that among our churches and their teachers there are not two preachers who are agreed in each and every article of the Augsburg Confession. (SD 12, 3)Even if those, who do not really care whether our Church exists or not, were successful in cavilling our church out of existence in our day, it would still remain a weighty historical fact. And even if it were the case that in our day only a few Lutherans remain, they would yet be standing in that great consensus. Those who are united in that consensus of what is believed, taught and confessed in the true church, are united not only with those confessing along with them today, but also with all those who before us confessed the true faith, and with those not yet born who will in their day confess the same confession. The more profoundly aware we are of this confessional communion the more keenly we will be alert for that consensus among those now living, a consensus surely greater than we are bold to ask or think. And even if this were not so, a task remains for those who with heart and mouth confess the Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Altar confessed in the Lutheran Reformation. That is the task to confess to all Christians everywhere of every confession, what by the grace of God has been given to the Lutheran Church to confess, to confess what Scripture gives us to confess of the Lords Supper. Whatever the Lord has entrusted to our Church truly to confess belongs to all Christians.
From this it follows that there are then two things for
Lutherans to
do regarding the Lords Supper. First, profoundest
pondering of the
Doctrine of the Lords Supper of our own Church. This
cannot be done
without humble testing of the Doctrine by the Scripture.
The second
thing to be done is the joyful proclamation of the truth
given us to
confess and proclaim. That is no longer the Lords gift
if we
attempt to keep it only as ours; it is for all
Christians, and this
the more urgently so as they are drawn in our day to
earnest probing
of the Lords Supper.
As a step toward preparing to engage this task we hope
this book may
play some small part.
Translated by Norman Nagel
From Vom Sakrament des Altars: Lutherische Beitraege zur Frage des heiligen Abendmahls. Edited by Hermann Sasse. Leipzig: Doerffling and Francke, 1941.
Hermann Sasse
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