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| Zwingli |
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| Luther |
"Nothing shows more clearly than the Marburg Articles that the doctrinal difference concerning the Lord's Supper is not, as Zwingli and his friends believed, a difference in one point of doctrine only -and a minor one at that- since it is not an article of the Creed. Luther was right when from the very beginning he saw that, as the Words of Institution are the Gospel itself, a difference in the understanding of the Sacrament must reveal nothing less than a difference in the understanding of the Gospel. If he did not realize this in the atmosphere of the last days at Marburg, the reason was that he interpreted the Articles according to his theology, and took it for granted that Zwingli, in accepting the terms, also agreed with the content. Hre failed to see, as many Lutherans later in their discussions and negotiations with Reformed theologians also have failed to see, that Zwingli's theology, and later that of Calvin, allowed for a far more flexible use of theological terms.
The versatility of Zwingli and his friends and successors is not, as in the case of Bucer, determined by their characters; it is rather a different understanding of Christianity. Koehler has repeatedly called our attention to the fact that the controversies on the Sacrament between the Reformers were instrumental in creating the concept of what Bucer called ratio Christianismi, the essence of Christianity. The idea belongs to the humanist interpretation of the Christian faith. Erasmus distinguished between those vital truths of the Bible which are sufficient for Christian piety, and questions and answers which should not be discussed. Erasmus connected this distinction with the interpretation of the Bible, the single passages of which are often understood differently. While for Erasmus, who remained a faithful son of the Roman church, the church and ecclesiastical tradition were the final authority in defining what is essential and what not, for Zwingli this authority was, of course, Holy Scripture. For him the Word of God was clear and sufficient, provided the Holy Spirit enlightens the hearer or the reader. Thus, he himself was absolutely sure about his understanding of John 6 as the key to the understanding of the Words of Institution, without asking whether perhaps the difficulty of a literal understanding of these words had not driven him to John 6 as a possible means of avoiding that difficulty. Whatever the more-or-less unconscious motive of always resorting to John 6:63 may ha ve been, Zwingli was deeply convinced that he, and not Luther, followed Scripture.
How, then, is it to be explained that he was prepared to recognize Luther as a brother in the faith, in spite of what he regarded as Luther's grave error? The answer is that for him the Sacrament, and the doctrine on the Sacrament, did not belong to those essentials of the Christian faith concerning which there must be unity within the church. In contradistinction to Luther, the understanding of the Gospel on which there must be unanimity is independent of the understanding of the Lord's Supper and of the Sacraments in general. The Sacrament for Zwingli is not part of parcel of the Gospel; it is an ordinance of Christ, to be performed by Christians. This performance may have some effect on the soul of the faithful, insofar as the 'sign' makes the Word of the Gospel clearer. But the Sacraments can never be means of grace in the strict sense. They only signify the grace which has been given without them, as he puts it in Art. 7 of his Fidei Ratio:
"I believe, indeed, I know, that all the sacraments are so far from conferring grace that they do not even convey of distribute it."
Here lies the deepest reason for the for the differing attitudes of Luther and Zwingli, not only toward the Sacrament as such, but also toward the doctrine, that is, the understanding of the Sacrament. If the Sacrament, though performed by man, is an act of God, and if this act (as other passages of the Lutheran Confessions indicate even more clearly) is more than a sign, namely, an instrument by which God gives something, then the denial of this character of the Sacrament is nothing less than a destruction of the Sacrament. The Sacrament is either a means by which God gives His grace, or it is no Sacrament at all - at least, not in the sense in which the church for 1500 years, since the days of the apostles, had understood the Sacrament. Nothing can conceal the difference between churches for which the Sacraments are instruments of divine grace and churches which deny this.
The most important result of Marburg was that the difference became unmistakable clear. For Luther the right understanding of the Sacrament as a means of grace, the understanding of the Words of Institution in their simple, literal sense, was an ecclesiastical article of the Christian faith. He never demanded the acceptance of a theological theory. His doctrine on the ubiquity of the body of Christ, or any other theological attempt to explain the mystery, was not even mentioned. The suggestion which he made after the colloquy, and which was meant to settle the controversy, shows what he regarded as essential and what not, namely, the confession that
"the body and blood are truly, that is, substantively and essentially - though not quantitatively, or qualitatively, or locally - present, and are given."
The disagreement concerning this question caused Luther to refuse the fraternal handshake and recognition as a brother in the faith to Zwingli at the end of the colloquy. He did not do it lightheartedly, as is shown by his attempts to save the union after the breakdown of the discussions. He had to take this stand because nothing less was at stake than the Word of God, the Sacrament of Christ, and thereby the existence of the Church. Not the existence of a Lutheran church; Luther was never interested in that. Denominations in the modern sense had not yet come into existence after the unity of Western Christendom had failed. The question for Luther was whether or not the Sacraments, as a means of grace, and whether the Sacrament of the Altar, as the Sacrament of the true body and blood of Christ, were rooted in the Gospel and therefore essential for the Church. He could not but answer this question in the affirmative. A church without the Sacrament as real means of grace was for him a church without Christ, who had instituted Baptism as a washing of regeneration and the Supper as the Sacrament of his true body and blood. This is the reason why he could not recognize Zwingli as a brother in the faith.
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Whether such assumptions are necessary presuppositions for an understanding of the Word of God, as Zwingli believed, or whether they are philosophical prejudices which prevent the true understanding of God's Word, as Luther was convinced, that is the question which at the time divided the two Reformers and their followers. It is a questions which cannot be answered by a compromise. This was seen quite clearly, not only by Luther, but also by Zwingli. There is no via media between est and significat. It shows the greatness of Zwingli in contrast to Bucer, Calvin, and all prophets of a middle road between Wittenberg and Zurich. Whatever shortcomings he may have had, he was a clear thinker. The issue between Luther and Zwingli was a question of faith, and therefore, a question of conscience. While, in other points, as the Marburg Articles show, he could yield in a way which seems to indicate that either he did not fully realize the seriousness of the questions involved, or he acted as a politician, here the point was reached where he could not give in. It is of no avail to ask who is responsible for the failure of the colloquy, which Luther had anticipated from the outset. As believing Christians we shall have our personal convictions as to who was right and who was wrong. The church historian can only state the fact that each one was bound in conscience to follow his understanding of the Word of God....
The issue between Luther and Zwingli, between the Lutheran and the Reformed churches of the 16th century, was solely whether the two doctrines on the Sacrament were theological opinions which could and should be tolerated in one and the same church, or whether they had to regard one another as heretics, which made altar -and church- fellowship impossible. While Zwingli regarded Luther's view as wrong, he was prepared to tolerate it because, in his opinion, the question of the Sacrament did not belong to the essentials of the Christian faith. He found, in this respect, many followers in the Reformed churches; however, in the 16th century, as a consequence of the bitter controversies, other Reformed theologians denied the possibility of such intercommunion. Luther, on the other hand, never had any doubt that the denials of bodily presence and bodily eating in the Sacrament was a heresy that made intercommunion impossible. As he left Marburg, hoping that the other side would eventually see this heresy, and accept the Real Presence in the sense of his last suggestion, so during the following decade he left nothing undone to win over as many as possible of those who in the days of Marburg had stood against him. However, when he saw that all his attempts were in vain, and that the old heresy appeared in new forms, he had to repeat his no of Marburg, as he did in his Short Confession shortly before his death:
Hermann Sasse, This is My Body, p. 227-232, 236-237
There you have it, straight from the historical account as given by Hermann Sasse. In Sasse's account, we can glean many truths, especially from a Lutheran perspective.
Most of all, what we should take from this is that for Lutherans, the Real Presence is the Gospel given to us in visible form. We do not agree with Zwingli, the Reformed churches, and most of all modern American evangelicalism, that the Holy Sacrament of the Altar is a secondary matter of the Christian faith. Anything that involves the Gospel is primary and cannot be compromised. Thus, as Zwingli and the modern Reformed church would like to claim Luther and the Lutherans for their side as one greater whole, we cannot agree.
We do not agree with the Reformed churches and their offspring that the Sacrament is secondary and that we should overlook errors on this matter for the sake of union. We take St. Paul's warning in 1 Corinthians very seriously. This means that Lutheran churches cannot in good faith offer the body and blood of Christ to those who deny that it is the body and blood of Christ.
Moreover we cannot, as Luther did not at Marburg in 1529, offer the right hand of fellowship to people and churches that we see as having a grave error regarding the Gospel.
Where Zwingli and modern ancestors of the Reformed church see Holy Communion as a secondary, we see it as being of first importance. Where people may cry that we must stick to Christ alone regarding the fundamentals, we reply that this doctrine is in fact part of that. It is part and parcel of the Gospel and of Christ alone. Not to mention, it is paramount regarding the doctrine of justification by faith alone.
Here we stand. We can do no other.
This is My Body.
+Pax+
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