The Word becomes visible as sacrament, is revealed and brought within our sight, so to speak, for a transaction in ‘open court’ (publici juris). It moves outside the sphere of the merely audible and intelligible to the threshold of the world of sight and touch. (Exactly so much and no more, in my judgement, should be said here.) ‘Hence it follows that the sacraments, that is the external words of God spoken by a priest, are in truth a great consolation and are perfectly comprehensible signs of God’s purpose. On them a man should support himself as on a good staff, like the one with which the patriarch Jacob went through Jordan. Or they should be like a lantern by which a man guides himself, on which he must keep his eyes steadily as he walks the long road of death, sin and hell.’2
Luther interpreted the elevation of the host, not as a sacrifice (oblatio) to God, but as ‘an admonition to us, by which we are summoned to faith in this testament which [the officiating priest] so exhibits and proclaims with the words of Christ, while at the same time he shows the sign of it; and the lifting up of the bread fitly corresponds to the proclamation, “this is my body” ’.3
But Luther prefers to the figure of the relation of promise and sign that of the seal, which he connects with the idea of the testament. ‘His words are for us like a letter, and his signs are like a seal or signet.’4 ‘This is what the priest means when he raises the host. He addresses us rather than God, as if he meant to say: Look here, this is the seal and sign of the testament in which Christ assigned to us the forgiveness of sins and eternal life.’1 Through this seal, the promise is given to me, a binding promise, so that the content (although it is not yet in my possession) is my legal property, so that the promise becomes a deed of transfer. ‘This is the use of the sacrament: thou art able to say, I have this clear (apertum) word (in the German, ‘here I clearly have this word’), my sins are forgiven. Also I have received the seal, I have eaten and drunk. This I can certainly prove, for I have done it in the sight of Satan and the world.’2
Thus while the figure of the ‘testament’ is kept, and I am told that I am the heir and the inheritance is mine, the Word which has clearly come to the threshold of sight and touch in order to tell me this, has ceased to be a second component, separate from the sacramental act and sign. The hidden penetration has occurred in power, and the sacrament is made (et fit sacramentum). ‘Behold, this is then truly God’s Word, Christ is the bread. The bread is God’s Word, and yet is a thing, a piece of bread. For it is in the Word, and the Word is in it. And believing the same Word means eating the bread; and he to whom God gives it lives eternally.’3 Divine food and drink is now in this ‘blade of straw’—in the sign established through the Word of divine truth and the divine presence, not otherwise—but just because of that: est, it is.
II
‘Promise and faith are correlative, so that where there has been no promise, there cannot be faith; and where faith has not been, there is no promise.’4 ‘God prepared here food, table and a meal for our faith, but faith is not fed except by the Word of God alone.’5
This, then, is the second pillar of Luther’s doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, faith nourished by the Word of God. And this also has primarily a critical significance. The sacrament is received only through faith and through nothing else. In this context also the two restrictions, not through sacramental act and not through the receiving of the sacramental sign, would be distinct; but the nature of the content results in a continual fusion. Without impairing the clarity of our investigation we can therefore speak of both together.
The sharpest expression of this critical interpretation is found in a Corpus Christi sermon on John 6.1 Luther there protests against connecting this passage of Scripture with the sacrament. The argument runs: ‘However true it is that the sacrament is real food, yet it is no help at all to him who does not receive it in his heart by faith. For it makes nobody religious or believing but demands that he be religious and believing beforehand.’2 On the contrary the eating and drinking of which John 6 speaks is from the beginning ‘nothing else but believing on the Lord Christ who has given his flesh and blood in our behalf’. That eating is done ‘in the heart and not with the mouth. Eating in the heart does not deceive, but eating with the mouth, that deceives. Eating with the mouth has an end, but the other eating continues forever without ceasing.’3 What is ‘profitable’ is not the physical eating of the flesh but ‘the believing that this bread is the flesh of God’s Son’.4 In every way the festival preacher is declaring war against the festival of the sacramental object, Corpus Christi, which brought him to the pulpit. There was no other festival to which he was so opposed. He would like to advise that it be wholly abolished, for to him it was the most pernicious festival of the whole year.5
These were ideas which Luther expressed without restraint before the beginning of the disputes on the Lord’s Supper. Here belongs especially the well-known passage from the Corpus Christi sermon of 1519: ‘Be careful! You need to be concerned with the spiritual body of Christ rather than with the natural; and faith in the spiritual is more needed than faith in the natural. For the natural without the spiritual is of no use in this sacrament.’6 Or ‘the sacrament in itself without faith does nothing; yea God himself, who does all things, does not and cannot do good to any man unless he believes in him firmly. Still less can the sacrament do anything.’7 Or ‘not the sacraments but faith at the sacraments makes alive and justifies. Wherefore many take the sacrament and yet do not thereby become alive and truly religious. But he who believes is godly and lives.’1
With the word believe Luther has also answered the question of the right fitness (dispositio) and of the right preparation (praeparatio) for partaking of the sacrament, and of the right use (usus) of it. It is clear that with this answer, questions arising out of the practice of penance2 acquire a wholly new character. The problem of man’s attitude to the gift is transformed into that of his attitude to the giver. Without faith in God or Christ, the Giver, the gift is not given—even though the gift be God himself.3 ‘It does nothing but harm if it is only a “work done” (opus operatum); it must be a “work of doing” (opus operantis)’, which Luther interprets as ‘it must be used in faith’.4 Later he will no longer employ this formulation, for ‘faith is not a work, but the teacher (magister) and life of works’.5 But in the same writing in which this sentence occurs Luther also said: ‘Let him who is to approach the altar … beware lest he appear empty before the Lord God. But he will be empty if does not have faith.’6
What that ‘work of doing’ meant was that faith in the Giver asserts a claim on the whole man, predicates a taking possession of the whole man; and this is not denied but affirmed by calling faith ‘the life and teacher of works’. In this context, both before and after 1520, we find the very centre of Luther’s concept of faith. ‘Take heed that thou becomest another person, or do not go’ must be said to the communicant. Otherwise ‘there is not much difference between giving a man the holy sacrament and shoving it down the throat of a sow. It is a mockery and a dishonouring of the sacrament.’7
But what does it mean to believe, not to come empty, to become a different person? The best beginning for an answer is the genuine, early-Luther definition: ‘The best fitness (dispositio) is truly that thou art worst fitted; and contrarywise thou art worst fitted when thou art best fitted. But this is to be understood as meaning that when thou feelest thyself most miserable and most in need of grace, even so, by that very fact, thou art capable of receiving grace and art especially fitted for the sacrament. Again, more than thou fearest death and hell, do not imagine thyself fit and worthy as if thou wert to bring to God a clean heart—that clean heart must be asked