Martin Luther on the Lord's Supper

True bodily presence in, with, and under the elements

THE POSITION

The bread and wine are the true body and blood of Christ, on the strength of Christ's words and nothing else. Luther's test case is the unworthy communicant: the body and blood are "given and received not only by the godly, but also by wicked Christians," which means the presence does not depend on the recipient's faith. Against Zwingli's argument that a body is confined to one place he sets four grounds — the unity of Christ's person, that "God's right hand is everywhere," that "God's Word is not false, nor does it lie," and that God "has and knows of many modes of being in any place." He simultaneously rejects transubstantiation, insisting that real bread remains, since Paul calls it "the bread which we break."

1 OTHER HOLD THIS

ABOUT THIS FIGURE

Augustinian friar whose protest over indulgences opened the Reformation, and the theologian for whom justification by faith and the bondage of the will are the whole of the gospel. This entry rests on his own writings only — The Bondage of the Will (1525), the Smalcald Articles (1537), the Large and Small Catechisms (1529), Concerning Christian Liberty (1520), the Heidelberg Disputation (1518), the Church Postil and his biblical prefaces — and deliberately excludes the Augsburg Confession and the Formula of Concord, which are not his.