This Is My Body - Response to Andrew Clover I

An old friend of mine (a former Lutheran, now a Calvinist) recently came to this blog to challenge some of the Lutheran interpretations of the Lord's Supper. And while the exchange was less than irenic, I hope we can get to the bottom of some of this. The exchange can be found in the comments section here: Where Are You Looking For God

In the process, my friend Mr. Clover posted three blogs that he wrote over at the Reformation 500 site in which he lays out some arguments against the Lutheran interpretation of the Holy Eucharist. They can be found here: Part I, Part II, Part III

I would like to thank Mr. Clover for interacting with the Lutheran position on the topic. I do however think his argumentation falls short of any sort of refutation of the Lutheran position, and indeed I believe much of it is based on faulty conflations and argumentation.

It seems that Mr. Clover's main premise is that when Lutheranism insists that "is means is" we mean something else by it and don't take the words of Christ literally; at least not any more than anyone else. I intend to show that his argumentation falls short.

Mr. Clover begins his argument in Part I by saying the following:

"When describing their view of the supper, Lutherans will almost invariably say something along the lines of “We take Christ at His word. When The Lord says ‘this is my body’ we acknowledge that it ‘is’ His body.” It is a source of pride for the Lutheran, not pride in a sinful sense, that their theology doesn’t require them to change the words of institution or play logical and philosophical games or do mental gymnastics with the text. Often times the argument from a Lutheran is as simple as “Hey, is=is.” While I admire the approach to scripture that insists on letting the word speak and not making it say what it doesn’t, I believe that this claim to take Christ’s words literally while others do not is where the Lutheran argument falls on it’s own petard."

While I am glad that Mr. Clover gives a nod to Lutheranism's approach to the Holy Scriptures, it kind of seems to me that he is baiting and switching here. It sounds like "hey, I love how you guys look at Scripture. Too bad you're dead wrong." Anyhow, that's neither here nor there. I appreciate Mr. Clover's attempt to be gracious to his Lutheran brothers. He continues:

"As I said, Lutherans are fond of claiming that their understanding of communion avoids the mental gymnastics of the “sacramentarians”, a word which refers to non-sacramental Christians in the Lutheran confessions. But it doesn’t take long for the Lutheran argument to end up doing what the Reformed position is itself accused of doing. Why do I say that? The Lutheran position in reality, and I know I am going to elicit some anger here, does not believe that the bread “is” the body of Christ. It is in fact the case that Lutherans believe in what they call the real presence (explained, among other places, in Mueller’s Christian Dogmatics beginning at page 506). They believe that Christ’s body and blood is present “in, with, and under” the elements of bread and wine."

The main point he is making here is that we Lutherans don't really believe that "is means is" in the Words of Institution. In reality, he is leveling the claim that we rationalize our explanation of the Eucharist just like the Reformed do. He doesn't use that terminology, but that's ultimately what he is saying. Not only that, but he is conceding that Reformed Theology does not believe the Eucharist is truly the body and blood of Christ.

But do we do that? I don't think so. Certainly many Lutherans have tried to explain the "how" of the Real Presence. We don't dispute that. But if one is familiar with Lutheran Theology, we hold to something called the Sacramental Union. More on this as we go along.

Here I think is where Mr. Clover starts going off the rails. He states:

"I hasten to point out, as have others, that if “is” must mean literally “is” in it’s most literal sense, then as soon as is means “present in, with, and under” the Lutheran argument no longer bears the weight of it’s own demand for a literal reading of the words of institution. But the convenient literalism of the Lutheran argument goes further. The “in, with, and under” concept is often explained as a “sacramental presence”."

He is essentially arguing that we say that "is means in, with, and under," or that "is means Sacramental Presence." But the problem with that argument is that we do not mean that at all. Mr. Clover is conflating two things into one thing here, and he ends up arguing erratically against the Lutheran position. We do not say that "is means Sacramental Presence." We say that "is means is." The bread truly is the body. The wine truly is the blood. The Sacramental Union is not our definition of "is." This is where Mr. Clover's argumentation falls on its own petard, to use his terminology.

"I am not really sure how one can chide another for engaging in mental gymnastics, as Lutherans often do other Protestants, and then in the same breath introduce a category like “illocal presence” claiming all the while to simply be taking the word “is” at face value. This is a problem particularly in light of the demand on the part of Lutherans that we glean our understanding of this doctrine primarily from the passages that deal directly with the issue of the supper (I agree in principle). Martin Chemnitz, one of the great Lutheran dogmaticians of history, is quite insistent on this point in his work “The Lord’s Supper”. So my question is: Is the definition “Present in, with, and under in an illocal, supernatural, yet real way” really just a plain understanding of the word “is”? No, rather the allegedly literal, or plain reading as they are want to call it, ends up defining “is” as “is present with” and then redefining “is present with” as “is not physically present with”. Whatever this interpretation of the words of institution is, it isn’t a literal one. It may be non-literal in a different way than the memorialist view; but it is non-literal all the same."

Here again, Mr. Clover continues this line of thought. Here is the problem: When we say all this stuff about the Sacramental Union, we are not trying to define the word "is" in the Words of Institution. I have to wonder if Mr. Clover knows what the word "Sacrament" means. A Sacrament is essentially a mystery. That is what the Latin term means. So when we talk about the Sacramental Union, we're not saying that "is equals Sacramental Union." We're saying that the bread is the body of Christ and the wine is the blood of Christ, in some mysterious way (Sacramental). Far from being a rationalistic explanation, we are simply saying that the bread and wine are Christ's body and blood, and we can't explain exactly how they are Christ's body and blood. Hence, the terminology of Sacramental Union.

The Sacramental Union, in other words, is us saying that we can't completely explain the *how* of how the bread and wine are Christ's body and blood. Nor do we need to. Scripture never gives us any rationalistic definition of how this occurs. It does not teach transubstantiation or consubstantiation, for instance. It simply says that the bread is the body of Christ and the wine is the blood of Christ.

Therefore, our interpretation of the Words of Institution is literal, while we freely admit that we cannot explain how this comes about (hence, Sacramental Union...mystery). The only thing Scripture gives us are the Words of Institution.

+Pax+