THREE CONSIDERATIONS complicate the discussion of our subject. The first is the lack in the sacred Scriptures of a simple concept corresponding to our philosophical abstraction "presence." The second is that lack in the sacred Scriptures of a category corresponding to the theological term "sacrament."1 The third is the perennial problem of the relation of the Godhead and the humanity in the single person of Jesus Christ. When we come to speak about the presence not merely of God but also of the incarnate word, we have an added complication. We are speaking not only of a divine essence, but also of a humanity that has been inseparably united with the Godhead. The problem of maintaining the difficult and precarious balance which the creed of Chalcedon prescribes is perennial. As a result of sixteenth and seventeenth century polemics we tend to think of the theological problem as centering chiefly around the "real presence" of our Lord in the sacrament of the altar, but we need to remind ourselves that it goes far beyond this.
Various ages and various traditions have translated the biblical descriptions of the ascension and session of our Lord in different ways theologically. Whenever Lutheran theology was most true to its most characteristic insights, however, it rejected the idea that the exaltation of our Lord had resulted in his imprisonment in a 68-by-18-by-9-inch hole in space above the empyrean. On the contrary, it insisted that the exaltation was precisely the decisive self-liberation of our Lord from the circumscribing confines of a state in which his body normally occupied and vacated space as he moved about. As God's right hand is everywhere, Christ's exaltation enabled him to be in a very real sense with his disciples (and they in him) among all nations and until the close of the age, individually and wherever two or three or more gather in his name. This presence includes all space but it transcends all spatial limitations. This presence is that of his true humanity, but it depends upon the omnipresence that is his in the personal union as the second hypostasis of the holy and undivided Trinity (Ep VIII.17).
Of his Godhead we can say with Luther: "Nothing is so small, but that God is still smaller; nothing is so big, but that God is still bigger; nothing is so short, but that God is still shorter; nothing is so long, but that God is still longer; nothing is so broad, but that God is still broader; nothing is so narrow, but that God is still narrower; and so on."2 But because God became man in Christ Jesus, this series of statements has implications for christology and the sacraments as well.
This presence of the Godhead and of the exalted Christ is not something that we can manipulate. "There is a difference between his presence and your taking," Luther observes in Dass diese Worte Christi, "Das ist mein Leib," noch fest stehen (1527).
[God] is free and unbound wherever he is and does not have to stand there like a scoundrel locked in the stocks or wearing an iron collar... The same thing is true of Christ. Even though he is present everywhere, he does not let you take hold of him or catch him. He can divest himself of his shell, so that you get the shell and do not take hold of the kernel. Why? Because it is one thing when God is there and another when he is there for you. But he is there for you when he adds his word, binds himself with it, and says: "Here you shall find me." Now when you have the word, you can with assurance take hold of him and have him and say: "Here I have you, just as you say."3We are thus brought back to the biblical insight that an omnipresent God can be absent as far as the apprehension of his activity is concerned. Luther makes this point with specific reference to the sacrament of the altar, but the insight can be generalized:
Both can be true, that Christ is at the same time present and not present, according to different forms. . . God can very easily keep Christ's body in heaven in one particular way, and in another way in the bread. If there are two different modes of presence in the two instances, no contradiction is involved, just as it is no contradiction that Christ sat with his disciples after his resurrection, Luke 24 [44], and yet at the same time was not with them, as he himself says, "These things I spoke to you, while I was still with you." Here we find "with you" and "not with you," and yet there is no contradiction, for dialectics teaches children that contradictories must refer to the same thing, in the same form, in the same context.4In this connection James Andrea (1528-1590), coauthor of the Formula of Concord, can assert: "Here you have only one Christ and not two Christs, in such a way that the one is the son of God the other the son of man, one born of God the other of Mary, the one having suffered, the other not having suffered, the one in majesty, the other not, but there is a single Christ, the son of God and the son of Mary."5
We cannot of course describe our creaturely experience in the terms in which God sees it. But it is also obvious that we must not attempt to impose our creaturely category of space upon God, or even upon the humanity of the incarnate word. This carries with it the corollary that we cannot impose upon God or upon the humanity of the incarnate word our creaturely category of time. If his presence measured on one coordinate of creaturely existence, space, both includes and transcends space, his presence measured on the other coordinate of creaturely existence, time, includes time, so that it is completely historical, but nevertheless transcends time. This is true with reference both to the time of our Lord's life upon earth in the days of his flesh and our present time and all time in between and in the future.
Hermann Sasse's words are apposite:
In the Word of the Gospel, Christ, the Word Incarnate, speaks to us. In the Sacrament He gives us the same as He gave to the Twelve at the Last Supper. He gives us His true Body which was sacrificed on Calvary and raised from the dead on Easter. This makes us not only contemporaneous with Him, but unites us with Him in a way that transcends everything that we otherwise call "remembrance." The centuries that separate us from His earthly days and from the time of His death disappear.6
On the ancient principle that the works of God that go outside of his being are undivided7 and can be appropriated to any of the divine hypostases, the Symbols speak generally of God's operation in the sacraments (for example, Ap XIII.5), or they may speak of the Father using the sacraments to draw men to his Son (for example, SD XI.76), or they may speak of the Holy Ghost working through the sacraments (AC V.1-3; Ap XXIV.70; Ep II.1, 18; SD II.48, 65; III.16; XI.71). Because of the close link between the incarnation and the body and blood of Christ distributed and received in the sacrament of the altar, the Formula of Concord asserts that he imparts his true8 body and blood in the holy communion as one who is present (Ep VIII.17). Because of the relationship of the incarnate word to the Father and the Holy Ghost, he is thought of as present in his Godhead and in his humanity wherever the Father and the Holy Ghost are present.
The presence of the contemporaneous Christ in the sacraments is intimately bound up with his presence in the church, to which God has entrusted the sacraments, and in the sacred ministry, the incumbents of which normally administer the sacraments. The church as the body of Christ and as the new Israel is a particular vehicle of his presence in the world.
The church is not a purely mundane institution. Her words and her actions are not purely human words and actions. On the contrary, Jesus Christ is in a real sense in the midst of her through his word and sacrament as the second person of the Godhead. When the church is handing on his word and is administering his sacrament, God is acting through her. In the visible church and through the visible church the invisible God is also at work.9The sacred ministry, instituted by our Lord to proclaim his word and to administer his sacraments, is also significant as a vehicle of the contemporaneous Christ's presence. The called and ordained minister of the word and sacraments functions vice Christi; Christ has not merely empowered his ordained representatives to act, but he acts through them. As the head of the church he governs and sanctifies the church through the Holy Spirit (Ap VII.5). 10 This double potestas, namely, to sanctify (potestas ordinis) through the word and sacraments and to govern (potestas jurisdictionis) by excommunicating the scandalous sinners and absolving penitents, is precisely the potestas of the sacred ministry (Ap XXVIII.13). In a sacrament God is acting mediately in the present to give us in the moment in which the sacrament is received that which the promise annexed to the ceremony offers (Ap XXIV.18).
The real minister of holy baptism at every administration of the sacrament is our Lord, even though he makes use of human hands to pour or immerse and of human lips to repeat the sacramental formula. He inserts us as members of his body into the fellowship of his church. He cleanses us through the washing of water-in-the-word that he might make us holy (Eph. 5:26). He clothes us with himself (Gal. 3:27). He buries us with himself in the vault that could not hold him. He raises us with himself in his own bursting from the tomb. He makes us alive to God in himself. We say that the officiant baptizes the candidate, or that the church baptizes (SA III.v.4). By this we mean that those to whom God has given the potestas ordinis through the vocation of the church (Ap VII.28) represent not their own persons in administering sacraments but the person of Christ.
The name of the holy Trinity in which holy baptism is imparted is not the label of an absent Deity but the manifestation at the font of a God who is present and who acts in the sacrament. "To be baptized in the name of God is to be baptized not by men, but by God himself" (LC IV.10). John Gerhard's gloss on Matthew 28:19 is worth recalling. After stipulating that the name of God is God himself, he concludes that
the whole most holy Trinity is present in baptism with its grace and through the water of baptism is efficaciously active for the salvation of men. Consequently the sense of the words of institution, "Baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit," is this: "When in the power of his institution and command you administer baptism according to the prescribed form, this is not some bare external ceremony, some kind of exterior washing, but God the Father is present, God the Son is present, God the Holy Spirit is present at this action with the presence of grace. Nor is this a sterile presence, but God the Father through baptism receives the person baptized into grace on account of me, whom he has appointed the mediator and redeemer of humanity. I the Son myself wash the sins of the person away with my blood and I give him my righteousness, I make him a participant on my benefits and all the rest. The Holy Spirit gives him a new birth and impresses the seal of the promise of his heavenly inheritance on his heart."11The word in holy baptism is Christ's word, not only in the sense that he commands baptism, but that in baptism he speaks the word of rebirth and of new life. By virtue of the combination of the plain water with the divine word, that water of baptism, even though it remains a coarse external mask (LC IV.19), is a divine water, a heavenly water, a holy water, a blessed water, a fruitful water, a gracious water (LC IV.14, 17, 27).
The result of baptism is that even in this life, simultaneously with the act of baptism we enter into the Kingdom of Christ and begin a new life with him that lasts for ever. For this is what it means to be saved - negatively to be freed from sin, death and the devil, and positively to enter into the kingdom of Christ and to live with him for ever (LC IV.24-25; see also Ap IX.2; SC IV.6).
The association with Christ is not something that occurs only while the heavenly washing is being applied. Every Christian has enough to learn and to carry into practice in connection with baptism to last him a lifetime, for he constantly has need to insure that he believes confidently in everything that baptism promises to convey - conquest of satan and death, forgiveness of sin, the grace of God, the whole Christ, and the Holy Spirit and all his gifts (LC IV.41).
Similarly the "new man," the dark old Adam's resplendent adversary, who lives "in the presence of God (Fuer Gott, coram Deo)" comes forth and arises daily, that is, uninterruptedly.
The linking of the baptized person with the name of the holy Trinity creates a relationship so intimate and permanent that it survives even the relapse of the Christian into the sin that destroys the life of faith in the heart. For when by God's grace he returns to repentance and to a better mind, he has no need of a new baptism. Indeed, it would be blasphemy and a sacrilegious profanation to attempt it (SD II.69; LC IV.55, 78). The penitent finds that his Lord has been awaiting his return all along, that indeed he was never far from his erring human brother.
Because holy absolution is an effective means of imparting the grace of God, we must regard it as a vehicle whereby the presence of Christ, working through the Holy Spirit, through the church, and through the church's ministry, is effectively accomplished.
The section of the Small Catechism entitled "How the Unlearned Should Be Taught to Confess" is instructive for our purpose. The penitent asks the confessor to "declare the forgiveness of sins to [him] for God's sake" (SC V.21). He confesses his sins both generally in the presence of God (fuer Gott) and in detail before the confessor (fuer Euch) or, more precisely, "under the eyes of the confessor" (gegen dem Beichtiger) (SC V.22, 23, 25). The confessor elicits from the penitent the confession that the latter believes that the confessor's forgiveness is God's forgiveness (SC V.27). The confessor pronounces absolution "at the command of our Lord Jesus Christ" and in the name of the holy Trinity (SC V.28).
Whether or not we accord holy absolution the specific title of a sacrament, it is the Lutheran position that holy absolution is not the voice or the word of the human being who is present, but the word of God who forgives sins. For it is spoken in God's stead and by his command. God truly gives life through the word of absolution; the keys truly forgive sins in God's sight in accordance with the passage: "He that hears you hears me." Hence the voice of the absolving confessor is to be believed in no other way than as a voice sounding from heaven (Ap XII.40; see AC XXV.3-4 German). We are forgiven not on account of our contrition but because of the word of Christ, "Whatever you will bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (Ap IV.397). Absolution is the word of God which the power of the keys proclaims to individuals by divine authority (Ap XII.99). The significance of the close nexus between this authorization and the logion about Christ's presence in the midst of two or three gathered in his name should not be lost on us.
It was precisely in connection with holy absolution that Luther added to the Smalcald Articles between their signing and their publication that devastating attack upon enthusiasm in which he asserts with unqualified intransigence the thesis that "God gives his grace and his Spirit to no one except through or with the preceding external word" (SA III.viii.3).
When God forgives, the church cannot refuse to absolve. But "when those who have sinned after baptism come at any time to repentance, they obtain forgiveness of sins, and the church should not withhold absolution from them" (AC XII.1-2). This implies both the necessity of reconciliation with the empirical church for the sake of the spiritual health of the returning penitents, because their faith needs the nourishment that they cannot ordinarily obtain apart from the church's ministry; it also implies a necessary coincidence of the church's action with God's.
The church, Christ's body, administers holy absolution in the name of her head, Christ. Hence, though absolution is ordinarily to be administered by the ordained priests of the church, in a case of imperative life-or-death necessity any baptized member of the church can act for the whole body and for the Christ who is the body's head. To illustrate the principle, the Tractate on the Authority and Primacy of the Pope appeals to the alleged letter of St. Augustine to Fortunatus that can be found in no collection of the great church father's correspondence but only in the Decree of Gratian. In this letter the author (whoever he was) tells about the two passengers aboard a ship that seemed certain to be wrecked. One was a Christian under discipline, the other an unbaptized catechumen. The Christian under discipline, as the only baptized representative of the church present, baptized the catechumen, whereupon he, as the only member of the church not under discipline present, absolved the penitent from his sins and censures (Tr 67).
The almost exclusive reference of the term "real presence" to the holy communion illustrates that fact that in the case of the sacrament of the altar the link with the everpresent Christ is even more direct and concrete than it is in the case of holy baptism. Together with the Catholic church of every age, Lutherans have always taken literally the words, "This is my body, which is for you," and "This is my blood of the Covenant."
The fact that in the holy eucharist the body and blood of Christ are truly present and are distributed to all that eat therein is one that Lutheran theology is bound to assert with unrestricted vigor. The mode of the sacramental union it refuses, with equal vigor, to define. It rejects certain explanations that it regards as biblically or metaphysically untenable - transubstantiation in the sense of an exchange of the heavenly and the earthly substances with only the appearances of the earthly substances remaining, consubstantiation, impanation, local inclusion, permixture of nature (naturalis permixtio), affixture (affixio).12 It cites the canon of the Divine Liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox communion (Ap X.2) to prove that Lutherans share with the Catholic East no less than with the Catholic West a common conviction about the "what" of the sacrament.13
Luther found theological support, as we have pointed out, for his doctrine of the holy communion by positing the omnipresence of the human nature of our Lord; the "second Martin" - Martin Chemnitz - contented himself with affirming that "Christ could be according to his human nature wherever he wanted to be." The authors of the Formula of Concord regarded these two views as sufficiently congruent to be able to cite them both less than a page apart.14
Lutheran theology denies that the human nature of Christ - or, for that matter, his divine nature - is locally extended to all places in heaven and earth (Ep VIII.29), but it affirmed that
it is possible and very easy for Christ to impart as one who is present, his true body and blood in the holy communion, not according to the mode or property of the human nature, but according to the mode and property of God's right hand... This presence is not earthly or Capernaitic, but it is true and essential nevertheless, as the words of his testament read: "This is, is, is my body" (Ep VIII.17).Lutheran theology denies the propriety of adoring the visible forms of bread and wine, but it also affirms that "no one except an Arian heretic can and will deny that Christ himself, true God and man, who is truly and essentially present in the holy communion when it is rightly celebrated, ought to be worshipped in the Spirit and in truth" (SD VII.126). With SS. Justin Martyr, Cyprian, Augustine, Leo the Great, Gelasius, John Chrysostom and others, Lutheran theology sees the hypostatic union of the Godhead and the manhood in the incarnation paralleled by the sacramental union of the natural bread and the true natural body of Christ in the appointed administration of the sacrament (SD VII.37-38). The "rightly celebrated" and the "appointed administration" are directed against "the papistic expiatory sacrifice of the sacrificial mass," as the marginal comment to the final quotation of the Catalog of Testimonies puts it, a passage from St. John Chrysostom's Seventeenth Homily on the Letter to the Hebrews:
Since then sacrifices are offered in so many places, are there many Christs? By no means. But a single Christ is everywhere, complete here and complete there, a single body. Therefore just as he who is offered everywhere is one body and not many bodies, so also there is one offering. He is our high priest, who offered the sacrifice that cleanses us. We offer that sacrifice now, which was brought then, which is never used up. This [we do] as a memorial of what took place then. "Do this," he said, "as a memorial of me." We do not bring another sacrifice, like the high priest, but always that one; or rather we make a memorial of [that] sacrifice.15The basic insight upon which the Lutheran church rightly insists is that what Christ has promised to give to the communicants in the sacrament of the altar is his body and his blood. This is not to be sacrificed in favor of a vague "real presence" of Christ either in the eucharist or in the celebrating congregation. Such a concession, it is rightly felt, would reopen the door to the Sacramentarian distortion which was quite willing to concede the presence of Christ to faith while it intransigently and sometimes obscenely rejected the objective presence of his body and of his blood under the earthly forms of the consecrated bread and wine (see for example, SD VII.67). In the final analysis this is all that the manducatio oralis, the manducatio indignorum, and the unio sacramentalis were intended to secure.
That the communication of the body and the blood of our Lord to the communicants involves a personal encounter of the communicant with the incarnate word was cheerfully granted. No depreciation of the personal element in the heavenly gifts of the holy communion is involved in the Lutheran understanding of the words of institution, with their reference both to Christ's body and to his blood, as being more than a mere paraphrase of "This is I." The Symbols speak on occasion "of the presence of the living Christ" (Ap X.4) in the holy eucharist, but with consistently greater frequency they infer from the words of institution the more biblical insight that "in the holy communion the bread and the wine are the body and the blood of Christ" (so SA III.vi.1).16
On this basis John Gerhard can repeat in this Loci the Adoro [Te] devote of St. Thomas Aquinas.17 Martin Chemnitz can find peculiar comfort in the fact that
Christ himself is present for us in the celebration of the holy communion both in his Godhead and in his flesh, that he comes to us, and that he lays hold on us (Phil. 3:12), and connects us with himself in the most intimate fashion possible. This is the sweetest kind of consolation. For the laying hold on us by the Christ who is both God and man is necessary in order to bring about a mutual joining of Christ and ourselves. But we are weighed down with the load of our sins and oppressed by the burden of our weakness; we cannot enter into the possession of the secrets of the heavens (Col. 2:18), and penetrate to him in glory. And because our frailty cannot bear the glory of his majesty in the life (Matt. 17:6; Acts 9:4), he therefore is present under the bread and wine and his body and his blood are offered and received... There [in the holy communion] we may safely seek him and certainly find him, for there through the sacred ministry he gives his body and his blood to the communicants."18In the sense of that presence, the Small Catechism speaks of the sacrament of the altar as the bestowing of Christ upon the communicant (SC Pref 23). In the sense of that presence, the congregation addresses the Agnus Dei to the Lamb of God slain for the sins of the world and present in his body and blood in the holy eucharist. In the sense of that presence, Luther's Deutsche Messe could defend the elevation of the sacred species after the consecration:
It signifies that Christ has commanded us to remember him. For as the sacrament is elevated bodily and yet Christ's body and blood are not seen in it, so he is remembered and elevated through the word of the sermon and is also confessed and highly honored through the reception of the sacrament. Yet it is all apprehended by faith, for we do not see how Christ has given his body and blood for us and even now daily shows and offers it in the presence of God to obtain grace for us.19For Lutheran theology the bodily presence of our Lord in the sacrament of the altar is by definition quite independent of the personal faith or the personal sanctity of either the celebrant or the communicant (LC V.5; SD VII.32).
More important than the "how" of the eucharist is the "why." The sacrament of the altar confers forgiveness of sins, we say glibly. But the forgiveness of sins is itself only a symbol of much more. "Where there is forgiveness of sins there is also life and salvation." The sacrament of the altar confronts straitened consciences (AC XXIV.7), strengthens our faith (Ap IV.210), assures us that we are incorporated into Christ and washed with his blood (SD VII.16). It is a remedy against sin, flesh, devil, world, death, danger, and hell, and a bestowing of grace, life, paradise, heaven, Christ, God and everything good (SC Pref 23). It is a safeguard against death and all misfortune, a food of the soul that nourishes and strengthens the inner man, a daily pasture and sustenance, a refreshment of our faith in the battle of life, a consolation of overburdened hearts, a treasure from heaven, a precious antidote against the poison of weakness, a communication of the entire gospel, and an altogether wholesome, comforting medicine that helps us and gives life to both soul and body (LC V.22-24, 27, 32, 66, 68, 70).20
In the light of the interconfessional dialog, the presence of the contemporaneous Christ in the sacrament of the altar needs illustration from another aspect - the question of the nature of the eucharistic sacrifice. Obviously, to suggest that the sacrifice that takes place in the celebration of the holy eucharist supplements by some independent contribution the sacrifice of Golgatha, or that it is intrinsically an expiatory sacrifice, or that the offering of the eucharistic sacrifice (apart from or even in connection with the reception of our Lord's body and blood) is meritorious on our own behalf or on behalf of others living or dead, is to advance ideas that are sub-Christian and intolerable (Ap XXIV.11, 89; SA II.ii.12-15; Ep VII.23; SD VII.109).
At the same time, the Lutheran church has always recognized not only inferentially by its use of the term eucharist but also explicitly in Article XXIV of the Apology that the celebration of the holy communion is a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving (Ap XXIV.16-43, 74, 88, 93), an act in which we do honor to almighty God by way of response to his great gift to us (Ap XXIV.18). It sees the incense and the pure oblation foretold in Malachi 1:11 as including the holy eucharist as a ceremony - as long as it is not understood as being efficacious by the mere performance of the rite - together with the proclamation of the gospel and the reception of the holy communion (ipsa sumptio coenae Domini) (Ap XXIV.31-33).21
There are other sacrificial aspects to the holy eucharist, but certain historical developments tend to occlude these aspects for many contemporary Lutherans. One of these developments is the limited number of opportunities that many congregations furnish to their membership to receive the blessed sacrament - monthly or quarterly communion Sundays in place of the early Lutheran tradition of communion every Sunday and holy day. Another is the elevation of the sermon in some parts of the church to a place of almost exclusive dominance in the Sunday parochial service, with the celebration of the holy communion considered as an optional appendix for the few who insist on receiving it. The ideal, of course, is the recovery as far as feasible of the primitive practice where every communicant in the congregation received the holy communion with his fellow-Christians every Sunday. The Large Catechism repeats approvingly the advice of St. Hilary of Poiters that only they should absent themselves from the altar who had committed a sin for which they could be excommunicated and had not repented of it, lest - Luther adds - the absentees deprive themselves of life (LC V.59). The reception of the Lord's body and blood - whatever else it is - is a renewed challenge to, and a renewed act of, commitment to him who through his body and blood that we eat and drink confirms and fortifies our union with him.
Again, we remember that in the primitive Christian community, each communicant would bring to the celebration of the holy eucharist a small loaf of bread and a small flask of wine. These were the symbols of his self-dedication to the Lord of the church. From these offerings enough loaves and wine were set aside for the requirements of the holy communion, and the rest was used for relief of the poor. Later on these offerings were supplemented with other offerings in kind, and finally for the sake of convenience they were commuted into gifts of money. Here is the ultimate origin of the offertory procession and its modern replacement, the taking up of the offerings. One Lutheran rite includes in the great intercession after the offertory this prayer: "Receive, O God, our bodies and souls and all our talents, together with the offerings we bring before thee, for thou hast purchased us to be thine own that we may live unto thee."22 Thus our offerings are still symbols of our self-dedication to almighty God, the pledge that all that we have received from him will be used in conformity with his will as he reveals it to us in response to our prayer.
A further aspect of our sacrifice lies in the fact that it is as baptized members of the Christian community that we receive the holy communion, and it is precisely the sacrificial giving up of ourselves for the sake of Christ's bride the Church that our reception of the holy communion implies. We receive it not only - in the words of the familiar Lutheran post-communion collect - that through it God might strengthen us individually in faith toward him, but also that he might by it increase our fervent love toward one another.23
Furthermore, there is in the celebration of the holy communion a "representation," in the sense of making present again in the presence of God, of the sacrifice of his Son, so that we come before the Father not as aestimator meriti but only as veniae largitor per Christium Dominum nostrum ("not waying our merites but pardoning our offences, through Christe our Lorde," as the strongly Lutheran English Book of Common Prayer of 1549 rendered the closing words of the medieval canon). In this connection, we may recall that John Gerhard insists that the question at issue between Roman Catholics and Lutherans is not "if the mass has to do with something which is a true sacrifice or if something is offered in the mass." While rejecting the idea of sacrifice in the mass in the strict sense of an immolation, he grants that sacrifice can also mean to "represent" (repaesentare) to God the passion of his Son - the passion which was sacrificed in the past - through our prayers. The issue would then be if in the mass or eucharist something that is a sacrifice is offered to God. "Here and there the apostles use the term 'to offer sacrifice' in [this] metaphorical sense, Rom. 12:1; Philippians 2:17; 4:18; I Peter 2:5." In this latter sense the Lutherans grant a sacrifice of the mass in two ways, first "that in the celebration of the eucharist 'we proclaim the Lord's death' (I Corinthians 11:26), and pray that God, on account of that holy and spotless (immaculatum) sacrifice completed on the cross and on account of that holy victim (hostia) which is certainly present in the eucharist he would be merciful to us," and second, "that he would in kindness receive and grant a place to the rational and spiritual oblation of our prayer."24 A little farther on Gerhard insists that even the canon of the Roman mass does not imply a "true sacrifice," that is, an immolation, "but at most a memorial and a representation (memoria et repraesentatio) of a sacrifice already completed," in that the prayer Supplices of the canon reads: "Command that these things may by the hands of your holy angel be borne aloft to your altar on high in the sight of your divine majesty." Gerhard goes on: "It is clear that the sacrifice takes place in heaven, not on earth, inasmuch as there is offered to God the Father the death and passion of his beloved Son by way of commemoration (Per commemorationem)." Against St. Robert Bellarmine Gerhard makes the point:
As in the Christian sacrifice there is no other victim except the real and substantial body of Christ, so there is no other true priest except Christ himself. Hence this sacrifice once offered on the cross thereafter takes place continually (jugiter) in an unseen fashion in heaven by way of commemoration, when Christ offers to the Father on our behalf his sufferings of the past, especially when we are applying ourselves to the sacred mysteries, and this is the 'unbloody sacrifice' which is carried out in heaven."25Gerhard's reference to I Corinthians 11:26 is apposite. In our eating of the Lord's body and in our drinking of his blood of the covenant we proclaim his death until he comes. This proclamation is of course a witness to one another who participate in the sacred mysteries. In a sense it is also a proclamation in the presence of the world, for which Christ died and which he seeks to restore to himself in spite of its rejection of him. The world is aware that we make this memorial of him; the world may even see us make it when those who are still "in the world" visit our churches or when they look at telecasts of our services, or they may hear us make it when our services are broadcast by radio. But it must be remembered that observation by the world is essentially an accident, that basically the Christian eucharist is and under all circumstances must remain essentially private, the restricted meal of a fellowship of people who have been baptized into the same Christ and who recognize one another and are recognized by one another as confessors of the same faith and sharers of the same life. But in addition to our mutual witness, and in addition to whatever witness our eucharistic action may be to the world, our proclamation takes place in the presence of God. It affirms to him as much as it does to one another or to the world our utter dependence upon the life and death and resurrection of his Son for our life.
To whatever extent that we can speak of a sacrifice in the holy eucharist at all - and we remember that its primary thrust is sacramental, the impartation of the "forgiveness of sins" - the priest who offers that sacrifice is ultimately Christ, and it is at this point that the presence of the contemporaneous Christ becomes important for our present purpose.
When in Christ we plead his merits before God on our behalf it is Christ acting through us, the incarnate word, the son of God and the son of Mary. He is making present for us in our place in the universe and in our moment in time his once-for-all act that he constantly makes present in the sight of God by his intercession. Thus he is still the priest and although the essential historical moment of the sacrifice is for us chronologically in the past, he is still the victim. We in turn are saying in effect: "No offering that we could bring by ourselves could possibly reconcile us to you, our God, and you to us. All that we can plead is the work of your Son, his perfect obedience in all that he did and all that he suffered, his body nailed to the cross for us, his blood of the covenant poured out for the forgiveness of sins. As by the mystery of the sacramental union, you have made this hallowed bread and cup his true body and blood, for us Christians to eat and to drink, let it be present in your sight as the price of our redemption as well. Let it remind you that you have forgiven mankind in the reconciliation which you have wrought in your Son. Before your eyes we appeal to no virtue, no righteousness, no merit of our own, but only to the alien righteousness of your suffering servant and Son, our true Easter lamb, who was offered for us and has taken away the sins of the world, who by his death has destroyed death and by his rising to life again has restored to us everlasting life."
Relevant in this connection is the occurrence of the term zikkaron in an active sense in various Old Testament passages - the paschal anniversary to be kept as a feast "to the Lord" (Ex. 12:14), the stones of remembrance that Aaron was to bear before the Lord to bring the children of Israel to continual remembrance before him (Ex. 28:12, 29; see 39:7), the atonement money that was to bring the people of Israel to remembrance before the Lord (30:16), the blowing of the trumpets over the burnt offerings and peace offerings to serve the Israelites for remembrance before their God (Num. 10:10), the Midianite war booty that Moses and Eleaszar brought into the tent of meeting as a memorial for the people of Israel before the Lord (31:54). "The zikkaron", says a recent writer, "stimulates God's memory and his acts of memory are synonymous with his acts of intervention. The zikkaron also stimulates Israel's memory, which produces participation in the sacred order."26
Again, in the sense that we offer ourselves to the service of God and of our fellow-members of the body of Christ, it is Christ who is acting through us. The Apology calls the perils, the labors, and the sermons of Paul, Athanasius and Augustine and of others like them who taught the churches, authentic sacrifices accepted by God. It also calls them contests of Christ by which he trounced the devil and drove him away from believers. Shortly thereafter it goes on:
We believe the same thing with reference to the individual good works that Christians perform in the most unpublicized occupations. Through these works Christ is trouncing the devil, so that when the Corinthians were making contributions for the relief of the poor, it was a holy work and a sacrifice and a contest of Christ against the devil, who labors constantly to prevent anything from being done to the praise of God. To denounce such works, the confession of Christian teaching, the bearing of afflictions, deeds of charity, and mortifications of the flesh is without doubt a denunciation of the external rule of the kingdom of Christ among men (Ap IV.189-193).
We look briefly at the other rites that the Western tradition (followed in a limited way by the Lutheran Symbols) calls attention.
The Apology is willing to concede the status of a sacrament to holy orders as such, provided priesthood be understood as the ministry of teaching the gospel and administering the sacraments to others. (The "to others" is addressed against the late medieval doctrine which regarded the priesthood as an order of individuals set aside to offer masses as expiatory sacrifices for the sins of the living and the dead. In these circumstances a priest might offer many times as many private masses where he was the only worshipper and communicant as he would celebrate masses pro populo.) The Apology is also willing to concede the status of a sacrament to the imposition of hands, that is, to holy ordination as a rite. It argues that Christ instituted the ministry and that "the church has the command to appoint clergymen, which ought to be most gratifying to us, because we know that God approves this ministry and is present in the ministry." The ministry, the Apology observes, needs to be accorded every kind of praise because of the anticlericalism of the Anabaptists (Ap XIII.7-13).
Holy matrimony is conceded sacramental status by the Apology only with some qualifications. It antedates the new covenant and its promises pertain to the bodily life of this aeon. It ought to be differentiated from the other sacraments, which are sacraments of the New Testament and have testimonies of grace of the forgiveness of sins attached to them. Yet, we might observe, even in this sacrament of the Old Testament and, as it were, of the First Article, the presence of the cosmic Christ, through whom all things came into being, in whom all things hang together, and for whom all things ultimately exist, can still be predicated. If marriage is called a sacrament, the Apology points out, other divinely ordained states and offices, such as civil government, might also claim sacramental status. And, one is compelled to add, indeed they ought, for they, like marriage are masks behind which the omnipresent God and his Christ are accomplishing ends for which the universe was called into being.
In the case of holy confirmation and of extreme unction, we must regard as justifiable the failure of the Apology to concede the term "sacrament" to these rites as the sixteenth century Western church knew and practiced them. The substitution of an anointing with chrism for the apostolic imposition of hands in confirmation underlined the uncertainty with which the medieval church had debated the matter and the form of this "sacrament" and the issue of its institution by Christ. Similarly the medieval Western restriction of unction to the dying as part of their preparation for departure from this life was difficult to reconcile with St. James' injunction that obviously regarded the restoration of the patient to health as one of the purposes of the anointing (Ap XIII.6).
But these two rites are not simply to be brushed aside as having no relevance for the presence of Christ in his church. Our rite has retained the essential formula of confirmation in the post-baptismal blessing which accompanied the vesting with the chrisom or baptismal robe: "The almighty God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has begotten you anew through the water and the Holy Spirit and has forgiven you all your sins, strengthen (Staerke, confirmet) you with his grace to everlasting life. Amen."27 This blessing involves an invocation of a God who is regarded as present and active, although the activity is appropriated to the first rather than to the second hypostasis of the holy Trinity.
In the same way, it must be conceded that the only mark of a sacrament (even by the developed definition of classic Lutheran orthodoxy) which is lacking in the rite of unction as enjoined by St. James is explicit dominical institution (and, as far as the church is concerned, a demonstrable consensus of the fathers attesting its unbroken use between the writing of St. James' letter and about 400 A.D.). Certainly the anointing with oil in the name of the Lord, that is, in the name of Jesus Christ, involves confidence in the presence and activity of the Saviour whom the priests of the church invoked as they anointed the patient.
1 As originally published, this article discussed the problem of the terminology of "presence" and "sacrament" at this point. The editors of SR have placed this material in the APPENDIX. The subsections of this essay as published were simply numbered I through IX. For the sake of clarity, the editors have instead written a section heading for each.
2 WA (=Weimarer Ausgabe, the Weimar edition of Luther's works) 26:339.39-340.1. Von Abendmahl Christi Bekenntnis (1528) AE (=American Edition of Luther's Works) 37:228.
3 WA 23:151.3-17. Dass diese Worte Christi, "Das ist mein Leib," noch fest stehen (1527) AE 37:68.
4 WA 26:413.20-414.30. Von Abendmahl Christi Bekenntnis (1528) AE 37:276-7.
5 Jacob Andrea, Von den Spaltungen, so sich zwischen den Theologen Augspurgisher Confession von Anno 1548 viss auff diss 1573. Jar nach und nach erhaben (Tubingen: Georf Fruppenbach, 1573) 84f.
6 Hermann Sasse, This is My Body (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1959), 380. See also Werner Elert, The Structure of Lutheranism tr. Walter Hansen (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1963) 238.
7 So also Luther, WA 54:57.35. Von den letzten Worten Davids (1543) AE 15:302.
8 Since the ninth century at least the "true body" had identified the historical and sacramental body of Christ in distinction to the "mystical body," the church.
9 Fritz Viering, Christus und die Kirche in roemish-katholischer Sicht (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1962) 94-95.
10 This idea is reflected in the collects of our rite which describe the Holy Spirit as governing and sanctifying the church (Second Litany Collect: second collect of the Bidding Prayer) (Service Book and Hymnal (1958) 161, 240: The Lutheran Hymnal (1941) 112, 116.
11 Johannes Gerhard, Loci theologici, Locus XX, para. 82 [Ed. Preuss, IV:298]. See Ap XXIV.18.
12 Lutherans should be careful not to let these rejections take them too far. In disavowing consubstantiation (which almost invariably non-Lutheran writers attribute to Lutherans), they should be careful not to create the impression that they deny that the substantial body of Christ is present and is distributed and recieved with the consecrated bread. Luther defends "Einbroedtung" or impanation (although, of course, not in a circumscriptive sense) in his Bekenntnis of 1528 (WA 26, 434; AE 37:290). Similarly, the Formula correctly rejects a "Capernaitic" tearing of the flesh of Christ by the teeth of the communicants (Ep VII.42), in another antithesis Luther can say with reference to the demand of Nicholas II on Berengar of Tours in 1059 to agree that "the true body of Christ is crushed and ground with the teeth" by the communicants: "Would to God that all popes had acted in so Christian a fashion in all other matters as this pope did with Berengar in forcing this confession, for this is undoubtedly the meaning that he who eats and chews this bread eats and chews that which is the genuine, true body of Christ" (WA 26:443.1-4; AE 37:300-1).
13 It may be noted that the Symbols do not criticize the Eastern doctrine of metabole, and that the archtheologian of the Lutheran church sees a third possibility between Roman Catholic transubstantiation and the metaphorical view of Calvinism, "namely that the bread has been changed sacramentally" (quod videlicet panis mutatus fuerit sacramentaliter) and that he uses the term "sacramental change" (Mutatio sacramentalis) as a synonym (although not one to be preferred) for "sacramental union," the term that Luther had devised to express the biblical view. (Gerhard, Loci theologici, Locus XXI, cap. Xii, paras. 135-136 [ed. Preuss. V:135]; WA 26, 441; AE 37:300 see SD VII.38.
14 SD VIII.81, 92. (see also Ep VIII.16). John Huelsemann (1602-1661) speaks for Lutheranism when he says: "To what extent and how Christ is present in the sacrament of holy communion is something to be drawn wholly from the words of institution, which describes the entire nature of the sacrament... Whatever does not depend from Christ's institution does not pertain to the eucharist and is not to be attributed to it" Manuale Confessionis Augustanae, disp. VIII, qu. 1. 2d ed. (Wittenberg: Haeredes Johannis Bergeri [Johannes Roehnerus], 1653) 314.
15 Catalog of Testimonies, 10; Migne, Patrologia Graeca, 63:131; NPNF (=Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers) I:14:449.6.
16 "The Lutheran conception requires us to say both: presence of the body and blood of Christ and presence of Christ himself, hence, presence of Christ himself in his body and in his blood. But in any case we must forestall a 'naked' personal presence. It is the living Christ in person who is actively and self-givingly present, but precisely in this way that he gives us himself in his body really given for us and in his blood really poured out." Ernst Kinder, in Paul Jacobs, Ernst Kinder and Fritz Viering, Gegenwart Christi, 2nd ed. (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1960) 42.
17 Gerhard, Loci theologici, Locus XXI, cap. Xxvi, para. 265 [ed. Preuss, V:252].
18 Martin Chemnitz, Fundamenta sanae doctrinae de vera et substantiali praesentia, exhibitione et sumptione Corpis et Sanguinis Domini in coena, cap. Si, ed. Nove (Wittenberg: Clemens Bergerus et Zacharias Schuererus [Johannes Gormannus], 1610) 71.
19 WA 19:99.18-100.3. Deutsche Messe (1526) AE 53:82.
20 "Luther fought against the reduction of the real presence of Christ to the forgiveness of sins as the decisive mistake of the Antinomians" (Albrecht Peters, Realpaesenz: Luthers Zeugnis von Christi Gegenwart im Abendmahl (Berlin: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1960) 147.
21 To a large degree the corruption of medieval eucharistic theology arose from the decline in the number of communions at which the congregation received - until finally the constitution Omnis utriusque sexus in 1215 had to enforce an annual communion as a minimum performance for a professing Christian to retain his status in the community. The concomitant of this was the transfer of the benefits that previously had been associated with the reception of the blessed sacrament - for example, the "omnis benedictio caelestis et gratia" which the prayer Supplices in the canon sought for "quotquot ex hac altaris participatione sacrosanctum Filii tui corpus et sanguinem sumpserimus" - to a non-communicating congregation of worshippers whose sole connection with the eucharist was exhausted in the designation "circumstantes." If the heavenly blessing and grace was to be had merely by being a bystander, particularly when this standing by was regarded as meritorious, the old understanding of the eucharist had been superseded by a totally different interpretation of its significance and value.
22 The Lutheran Hymnal (1941) 24.
23 "The dominant concern of Paul is ultimately this: Christ's bodily communication of himself imposes on us the obligation of concrete bodily obedience in the body of Christ... In that Christ sacramentally obligates our bodies to service in his body, he demonstrates that he is the World-Ruler (Kosmokrator) who in our bodies is tearing the world under his rule and through his body is establishing the new world" (Ernst Kaesemann, Exegetische Versuche und Besinnunger, I (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1960) 34.
24 John Gerhard, Confessio catholica, II pars II, article xv, cap. 1 ekthesis 6 (Frankfurt am Main: Christianus Genschius [Johannes Andreae], 1679) 1200-1201. On some of the problems created by the term "repraesentatio" in the contemporary interconfessional dialog, see Sasse, This is My Body, 380, fn. 85, and Vilmos Vajta, Die Theologie des Gottesdienst bei Luther (Stockholm: Svenska Kyrkans Diaskonistyrelses Bokfoerlag, 1952) 101-103.
25 Gerhard, Confessio catholica, 1204.
26 Brevard S. Childs, Memory and Tradition in Israel (Naperville, Ill.: Alec R. Allenson, 1962) 68.
27 Bekenntnisschriften 541.30. Taufbuechlein (1526) AE 53:109
The sacred Scriptures of both the Old and New Testament have a considerable number of terms which imply presence and absence, going and coming, drawing near and withdrawing. As long as the record refers to human beings who are within or beyond sight or earshot of one another, no problem is presented. As soon as God is spoken of, the matter becomes more complex. Without attempting to describe the unfolding of the concepts involved or to determine the concrete frame of historical reference that underlies each symbolic description, we can distinguish a number of patterns of thinking about the "presence" of God.
The words most commonly used to denote God's "presence" are the very concrete Hebrew and Greek words for "face," panim and prosopon. God is thought of as present in the sense that he sees and that he - or at least his work - is seen.
Before Yahweh's face is fullness of joy, at his right hand are pleasures for ever more (Ps. 16:11). He hides those who take refuge with him in the covert of his face (Ps. 31:20). The upright shall dwell before his face (Ps. 140:13).
Cain counts it as part of his punishment that he shall be hidden from Yahweh's face (Gen. 4:14); he receives the "mark of Cain" as a kind of substitute and goes away from Yahweh's face to dwell in the land of Nod east of Eden (Gen. 4:16). In the book of Job Satan stands before God's face (Job 1:12; 2:7).
Liturgical offenses, such as a priest's approach to the holy things while he has an uncleanness, cut him off from Yahweh's face (Lev. 22:3). The worshipping congregation is to come before his face with thanksgiving (Ps. 95:2). Of considerable theological interest is Jeremiah 52:3: "Because of the anger of Yahweh things came to such a pass in Jerusalem and Judah that he cast them out from before his face."
God's face can be terrible as well as benign. While the righteous exult joyfully before God, the wicked perish before his face (Ps. 68:2, 3). Isaiah prays that God would rend the heavens and come down that the mountains and the nations might tremble at his face (Is. 64:1-3). The earth trembles at Yahweh's face (Ps. 68:8; 114:7). Adam and Eve hide themselves from God's face (Gen. 3:8). Job is terrified at his face (Job 23:15). Israel's enemies are to perish at the rebuke of his face (Ps. 80:16). The fruitful land was a desert, and all its cities were laid in ruins before Yahweh's face (Jer. 4:26; see Nah. 1:5). The idols of Egypt tremble at Yahweh's face and the hearts of the Egyptians melt within them (Is. 19:1). Jacob regards it as a marvel that at Peniel he has seen God face to face and yet his life has been preserved (Gen. 32:30). Yahweh speaks to Moses face to face (Exodus 33:11), yet Moses cannot see God's face and live (vv. 20, 23).
Prosopon has similar force in the New Testament. Those who do not know God and who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the face of God and the glory of his might (II Thess. 1:9). Christ has entered into heaven itself, now to appear before the face of God on our behalf (Heb. 9:24). (In both passages the Revised Standard Version renders prosopon with "presence.")
Whether God shows his "face" in grace or judgment, his "face" or his "presence" is spoken of as something active, rather than as merely statically "present."
There are other ways of putting it. The heavens are glad, the earth rejoices, the sea roars, the floods clap their hands, the fields exult, the hills and the trees of the wood sing for joy before God as he comes to judge the earth (Ps. 96:11-13; 98:7-9; I Chron. 16:32-33). Israel is to call upon Yahweh while he is near (Is. 55:6) The psalmist looks forward to going to God, his exceeding joy (Ps. 43:4). Yahweh is with Joseph in the house of Potiphar (Gen. 39:2) and in the royal prison (vv. 21, 23). By dwelling in the midst of his people, Yahweh dwells in the land where his people dwell (Num. 35:34; see I Kings 6:13; Ezek. 37:27). He dwells on Mount Zion and Jerusalem (Ps. 74:2; 135:21; Is. 8:18; Joel 3:17, 21). Yahweh's enthronement on the cherubim must be thought of as locating his effective presence in the ark of the covenant (I Sam. 4:4; II Sam. 6:2; 7:5, 6; Ps. 80:1). Saul laments that God has turned away from him and answers him no more (I Samuel 28:15). The Psalmist's adversaries taunt him: "Where is your God?" (Ps. 42:10).
God is thought of as present when he intervenes and conversely his absence is synonymous with a refusal to intervene. The psalmist asks: "Why dost thou stand afar off, O Lord? Why dost thou hide thyself in time of trouble?" (Ps. 10:1). This insight may help toward a better understanding of Psalm 22 and of the implications of our Lord's quotation of the first verse of this psalm on the cross. "Why has thou forsaken me?" says the same thing as "Why art thou so far from helping me?" (Ps. 22:1; see also v. 11, 19; Ps. 38:21; 71:12). Conversely, the wicked do not desire God's presence and say to him: "Depart from us!" (Job 22:17).
Yahweh moves with Israel in its wanderings; this fact distinguishes Israel from all other nations (Ex. 33:14-16; Lev. 26:12; Deut. 4:7; see II Sam. 7:7; I Chron. 17:5, 6; Ps. 68: 7, 8, 17, 18).
But Yahweh's presence can be perilous. If Yahweh were to go with his rebellious people for even a single moment, he would consume them (Ex. 33:3, 5). He goes out before the armies of Israel to smite their enemies (I Chron. 14:15). On the day of Yahweh's wrath safety lies in being hidden from him (Zeph. 2:3; see Luke 23:30).
There is a tendency to locate God's presence in the skies - Yahweh "dwells on high" (Is. 33:5) - although (as in Ps. 121) the mountains may also be thought of as God's dwelling-place. Yahweh looks down from the seat above the heavens where his glory dwells upon the heavens and the earth beneath (Ps. 113:4-6; 123:1; see 14:2). Yahweh is represented as going down to inspect the tower of Babel (Gen. 11:5) and to secure first-hand information about the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 18:21); yet in both cases he knows what has happened. He is depicted as resenting identification with the hills. In the war of Ahab with Benhadad the Syrians attribute their defeat to the fact that Yahweh is a hill deity; in an oracle this blasphemous limitation is made precisely the reason why the Israelite army, comparable to nothing more than two little flocks of goats, could defeat a Syrian host that filled the country in the battle at Aphek (I Kings 20:23-28).
God cannot be circumscribed. Special interest attaches to passages which within the frame of a few verses or even of a single verse imply both a specific presence and omnipresence.
Thus the Jerusalemites boast that the exiles have gone far from Yahweh and that the city is now theirs; Yahweh counters with the declaration that while he removed the exiles far off and scattered them he has been a sanctuary to them in the countries where they have gone (Ezek. 11:15-16). The watchpost at Galeed is a witness that Yahweh watches the behavior of both Laban and Jacob while they are absent from each other (Gen. 31:49). "Am I a God at hand," Yahweh asks rhetorically, "and not a God afar? Can a man hide himself in a secret place so that I cannot see him? Do I not fill heaven and earth?" (Jer. 23:23; see Is. 66:1 and Acts 7:49-50). The theme recurs in the prayer at the dedication of the first temple (I Kings 8:12, 27, 29, 30), and in the prayer of Hezekiah (II Kings 19:15; Is. 37:16). It is expanded in Psalm 139 to put Yahweh even in She'ol, at the limits of the world-girdling sea, and in the darkness of night (vv. 1-12). A theme of the book of Jonah is the impossibility of fleeing from Yahweh (Jonah 1:3, 10); he hears the prayers of the sailors on the Tarshish-bound ship (1:14), answers the cry of Jonah "from the belly of She'ol" (2:2-6), speaks to the great fish in the sea (2:10), observes the repentance of the Ninevites (3:10), and speaks to Jonah in his retreat east of the metropolis (4:5, 6). The difficult 68th psalm has God dwelling in Zion for ever and riding in the heavens, the ancient heavens (vv. 16, 33). The difference between God's absence and his presence is a matter of morality not of geography in Proverbs 15:29: "Yahweh is far from the wicked, but he hears the prayers of the righteous" (see Ps. 34:18; 85:9; 145:18). In Isaiah 57:15 the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity says: "I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and humble spirit."
In place of the face of God, we may have 1) his glory (Ex. 24:16); 2) his spirit (Ezek. 36:27; note the parallelism in Psalm 51:11 and I Sam. 16:14, where the Spirit of Yahweh is replaced by an evil spirit from Yahweh); 3) the angel of his face (Is. 63:9; compare the "man" who vanishes before sun-up in Genesis 32:24-30, the very ancient Peniel account); 4) the name of God both benignly (Ps. 75:1 Hebrew) and destructively (Is. 30:27).
The New Testament on this point reflects the Old Testament. We have already referred to the use of prosopon as a word for "presence."
In a passage of considerable importance for the theology of both holy baptism and the sacrament of the altar, I Cor. 10:1-5, Christ by a kind of appropriation is defined as the spiritual rock that accompanied the Israelites on their wilderness wanderings.
As members of the body of Christ we are in Christ, the New Testament reminds us again and again. By the same token, he is in us (John 17:23; Rom. 8:10), as the hope of glory (Col. 1:27). He dwells in our hearts by faith (Eph. 3:17). He lives in us (Gal. 2:20). Where two or three are gathered together in his name, he is in the midst of them (Matt. 18:20). He will come in to eat with the man that opens the door to his knocking (Rev. 3:20). He will be with his disciples until the close of the age (Matt. 28:20). Where he is, we shall be (John 12:26; 14:3; 17:24). He and the Father will come to us and make their home with us (John 14:23).
God abides in us and we in him (I John 3:24; 4:13-15). We are the temples of the living God; God lives in us and moves among us (II Cor. 6:16; see Lev. 26:11, 12; Ezek. 37:27; I Cor. 3:16). The Spirit dwells in us (John 14:17; Rom. 8:9, 11; II Tim. 1:14). Yet God also dwells in the unapproachable light, which no man has ever seen or can see (I Tim. 6:16). The creator and Lord of heaven and earth does not dwell in shrines made by man (Acts 17:24).
Our Lord abides in the Father28 and the Father in him, yet he comes from the Father and goes to the Father. His disciples cannot follow him now, but they will follow him hereafter. They will see him no more, but he will not leave his disciples orphaned; he will come to them. They will know that he is in the Father and they in him and he in them. (John 8:14; 13:3, 33, 36; 14:4, 10-12, 18- 20; 15:5-7; 16:5, 10 16). It is to their advantage that he goes away, because otherwise the Paraclete will not come (John 16:7); thus the Spirit becomes the surrogate of Christ.
Our Lord is taken up from his disciples into heaven (Acts 1:11) where he was before (John 6:62; see 20:17; Eph. 4:8-9), and will come again the same way (II Thess. 4:16); he is at God's right hand (Luke 22:69; Eph. 1:20, I Peter 3:22) and pleads for us there as our high priest (Heb. 4:14). Yet St. Paul hears and sees him on earth (Acts 9:4; I Cor. 15:8).
While we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord (II Cor. 5:6, 8, 9). Our Lord promises the dying thief that they will be together in paradise (Luke 23:43). For St. Paul to live is Christ, yet he has a desire to depart and be with Christ (Phil. 1:21, 23).
Parousia, with its eschatological thrust toward both the present and the future, preserves the idea of Christ's advent in messianic glory. Noteworthy in this connection is the fact that apokalypsis (I Peter 1:7, 13 see also vs. 5) and epiphaneia (in the Pastorals: I Timothy 6:14; II Timothy 4:1, 8; Titus 2:13; but not II Timothy 1:10; see Titus 2:11; 3:4) are synonyms for parousia and that II Thessalonians 2:8 speaks of the epiphaneia of Christ's parousia.
Late scholastic theology, followed by Luther,29 can speak of circumscriptive, definitive and repletive modes of presence. The technical designations can be dropped and Luther and the Symbols can speak of a bodily, a spiritual, and a heavenly mode of presence (SD VII 93-103), not, however, without some confusion of terms (SD VII.105). Classic Lutheran orthodoxy can furnish even more elaborate analyses.30 However congenial this vocabulary may appear to some, we are here far from the concreteness of the biblical language.
In summary we must say: Simply because God is God, in his working in his world he is always mysteriously both present to and absent from us. Put differently, the divine presence is always something that is opaque to the eye of the wayfaring Christian. We must account for his presence analogously. It is always for us a presence secundum quid.
As theology uses the word, "sacrament" does not occur in the sacred Scriptures. The ancient fathers differed among themselves on the definition and scope of the term. In the sixteenth century, the fixing of the number of sacraments in the West at seven was still relatively recent, and the scholastic debates about the matter and the form of some of the sacraments and about their direct institution by our Lord had not been wholly resolved. Under the circumstances, the differences of definition and enumeration even within the Lutheran Symbols - with those from Luther's pen inclining formally toward two and those from Melanchthon's pen counting three, four and even five - are not astonishing. The differences at least with reference to holy absolution are not as grave as they are sometimes made out to be. Luther uses the term "third sacrament" for holy absolution but prefers to consider it implied in holy baptism (LC IV.74). Melanchthon prefers to consider the "sacrament of repentance" separately from holy baptism and the holy communion (Ap XIII.4). The subsequent rigid Lutheran restriction of the number of sacraments to two is determined as much by anti-Roman-Catholic polemics as by any systematic reflection.
It is significant that the Lutheran Symbols proceed inductively from the separate consideration of baptism, the holy communion and holy absolution to the synthetic concept of sacrament, rather than deductively form an a priori definition of "sacrament" to an identification of the signs or rites that properly belong as particulars to the species. The numbering and definition of the sacraments is regarded as ultimately unimportant. The important thing is that "the matters and ceremonies instituted in the Scriptures, whatever the number, be not neglected... We do not believe it to be of any consequence if in teaching different persons count [the number of sacraments] differently... No prudent man will strive greatly about the number or the term if only those things be retained which have God's command and promise" (Ap XIII.2, 17).
28 The "who is in heaven" of John 3:33 is textually dubious but theologically sound (John 1:18).
29 WA 26, 326-336.
30 Heinrich Schmid, The Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 3rd ed. tr. Charles A. Hay and Henry E. Jacobs (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1961) 125-126.
25 July 1999
This essay was first published in the July 1963 issue of LUTHERAN WORLD while Dr. Piepkorn was Chairman of the Department of Systematic Theology of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri. It is now reprinted by permission of the editors.
doctor arthur c. piepkorn (1907-1973) was a 1928 graduate of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri. He earned his Ph.D. in 1932 from the University of Chicago. He served several parishes together with a lengthy and distinguished tenure as chaplain in the United States Army. In 1951 he was called to teach as a professor of systematic theology at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. Peipkorn was a prolific author and a collaborator in Tappert's translation of the Book of Concord. A collection of his essays was published in 1993 titled THE CHURCH: Selected Writings of Arthur Carl Piepkorn. He was also a regular participant in the Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogues for many years.
