No. 18 Okay, that makes sense. That is certainly what I believe, but I�m not sure I�m yet skilled at explaining that. I have another question. I have quite a few friends who are also church workers in this area�A lot of them are evangelicals who think that I am almost a Roman Catholic because of what I believe about the Lord�s Supper. How is our understanding different from the Roman Catholic view? >>PROFESSOR ROLAND ZIEGLER: I think that's an experience probably many have when they have Evangelical friends. There is the question of the Lord's Supper. And of course there are all these liturgical things, too. If you go into a traditional service and especially even if the pastor chants and -- Evangelical, "Oh, gosh, he wears ***vestmins, he chants." They might kneel. The pastor makes the sign of the cross, that's all very Catholic. And then you tell me that you believe that the Lord's Supper is actually the body and blood of Christ, well, I mean that's what I learned was always the Catholic teaching. When I was a student at the University of ***Tiebgan in Germany I remember once explaining to a female divinity student the Lutheran doctrine of the Lord's Supper. And she grew up in a supposedly Lutheran Church. And had her spontaneous answer was: I thought that's what the Catholics believed. So it's not even the evangelicals who have problems with distinguishing with what actually Lutherans believe and what Roman Catholics believe. Now, what's the difference between what we teach about the Lord's Supper and what the Roman Catholics believe? There are several points. The first one is the question of transubstantiation. Transubstantiation is the Roman Catholic teaching that through the speaking of the Words of Institution, the elements of bread and wine are transformed or actually there are substance changes so that they become and stay the body and blood of Christ. That was dogmatized at the fourth letter in Council in 1215 and is based on an Aristotelian understanding of what things are. Aristotle distinguished between substance and accidents. Substance is so to speak the whatness of a thing. And the accidents belong to a thing but they can change. And the thing still remains. If you have a table, its whatness consists -- it must be a flat surface and then attached some legs. But you can paint the table yellow or green or blue or black. It still remains a table. So the color of the table is actually an accident. The substance, its form, is not. If you get out an axe and cut up the table, there is no table anymore. Even though there's -- the wood is still there. But there is no table anymore. Its whatness is described -- the material is still there. But its whatness is no longer there. Now, when we look at the elements in the Lord's Supper, the question was how: Can it be that there is bread and wine and the body and blood at the same time? Because the metaphysical piece of position is two things cannot be at the same time at the same place two material things. If I sit on this chair, nobody else can sit on this chair. You can sit on my lap. But you cannot sit on the chair. You cannot occupy the same space. That's then why this philosophical construction came up that said actually the substance of bread and wine is destroyed or changed. Only the outward appearance remains. But now the substance of these appearances is the body and blood of Christ. So what you look at, the shape, the color, the taste, these are all accidents. These remain of bread and wine. But the substance, what is behind, so to speak, that changes. And it changes for good. You might say: Well, that's pretty speculative. But is that a problem? Well, the problem is to make it into a dogma. And the problem is that this is said, this is the teaching of the church. And you have to believe that or you are a false teacher. Scripture does not talk about substance and accidents. Scripture simply says: This is Christ's body and this is Christ's blood. And therefore, the Lutheran Church never accepted transubstantiation. Because as I say, it's a theory. And a theory that in one point contradicts Scripture. Because Paul talks about the bread that has been blessed is the body of Christ in I Corinthians 10:16. He does not say, "The accidents of the bread or bread here means only the accidents." But really it is the body of Christ. So Lutherans will say the bread and the wine remains. But they are united with the body and blood of Christ. So that you can point to the bread and to the wine and say, "This is Christ's body. This is Christ's blood." You can also say, "This is bread and this is wine." Both are correct statements. In the time after Luther, the combination that the body and blood of Christ are in, with and under the elements has become kind of a short formula. You don't find it in Luther himself, you don't find it in the Confession. But this means that here with the elements connected is the body and blood of Christ. The technical term is there's a sacramental union. The opponents of Lutheranism call that concept substantiation. But again Lutherans didn't really like that term and said: No, it just presumes another metaphysical theory. We don't have a metaphysical theory. We just say all that is required is you say, "This is Christ's body. This is Christ's blood." And it remains bread and wine according to Christ's institution. One of the consequences of the doctrine of transubstantiation is that because it's an enduring presence of Christ's body and blood, that now you can keep consecrated elements and put them into a tabernacle. Originally that was done to have elements at hand -- consecrated elements on hand for the Communion of the sick. That was the original purpose. And since you know wine spoils, you only had the host, you only had the body of Christ. And that was closed -- that was shut up in a tabernacle. Later on out of that reservation of the sacrament, a devotional cult or -- cult sounds a little bit too harsh in the context. But a devotional exercise developed. And that is that the host was exposed in a monstrance. It was put out so that the faithful could adore Christ, could venerate him. I mean, if Christ is there and you can keep him there, I mean, it comes natural that you want to have this adoration of the Eucharistic present Christ. But this adoration of the host you have not only at the exposition of the sacrament but then you have the Corpus Christi festival which came up in the 14th Century and really was developed in the counter Reformation where the body of Christ intermonstrance is carried around. In traditionally Roman Catholic areas in Germany, this is still a big, big holiday. Very high holiday. The Lutherans objected to this reservation of the sacrament. They said: We have to remember, Christ instituted a meal. He instituted his Eucharistic presence not that we put it in a box, put it in a monstrance. Adore him. Carry him around. Bless people with it so that we eat and -- but so that we eat and drink. That's what the Lord's Supper is all about. It's eating and drinking Christ's body and blood. It's not simply to make a miraculous presence of Christ and then we handle this presence. So the Lutherans rejected the reservation of the sacrament for the sick. And they rejected the adoration and exposition of the sacrament outside of the mass. And they rejected the Corpus Christi procession. In your class on the Lutheran Confessions you might have read about the Diet of Augsburg in 1513 when Charles IV came to Augsburg. He demanded that the Lutheran princes would participate in the Corpus Christi procession. And the Lutheran princes said no. And ***Mark Roy George of Amsbaugh said, "I would rather have my head chopped off than participate in this procession." So they felt very strongly that this is an abuse of Christ's institution and therefore an abomination. But the central point of difference between Lutherans and Roman Catholics is the question of the sacrifice of the mass. I mentioned before that this was one of the names for the Lord's Supper. What is the actual Roman Catholic teaching of the sacrifice of the mass? Roman Catholic teaching is that in the celebration of the sacrifice of the mass the priest, a concentrated and ordained priest, functions as the means through which he and the church offer to God the body and blood of Christ as a sacrifice to gain forgiveness of sins. So the celebration of the mass is an act of the church. Now, through the church also works Christ. But it is a joint action of the church and Christ through which to God, the Father, the body and blood of Christ are offered as a propitiatory sacrifice. A propitiatory sacrifice is a sacrifice that is done to gain forgiveness of sins, to atone for sins. Roman Catholic theology will say that this is not an additional sacrifice to the sacrifice of the cross. It is numerically one with the sacrifice of the cross. And there are different theories how then that can be. But it will insist that the mass is a true propitiatory sacrifice. Luther and the Lutheran Reformation saw this as the central problem with the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Lord's Supper. Because it turns the Lord's Supper from an action of God to us where God gives something to us into an action where we do something for God. It changes really the whole dynamics. In a way, it perverts the whole thing. It makes the Lord's Supper not into a reception of the forgiveness of Christ and therefore stresses that it is Christ alone who has atoned for us. But it is Christ alone who has made forgiveness of sins available for us. But rather it makes forgiveness of sins a joint divine enterprise. And that's of course the destruction of the doctrine of justification and it is also a great insult to God. As if we can cooperate in our salvation. As if we can do anything to gain forgiveness of sins. So that's why when you read Luther on the mass in the Smalcald Articles, he calls this the greatest abomination of the Roman Catholic Church. And he says from that dragon tale all the other abuse in the Roman Catholic Church came. Like, for example, the idea that you have masses for the dead. And you still have that. If you look at a local weekly bulletin in a Roman Catholic Church, you will find that in the weekly masses, there are names. Well, these are the names for which the mass is offered. That is for your beloved dead so that they can get out of purgatory. You have the priest offer a mass so that they can get out of purgatory. So again here we have something the church does. It helps others to get out of purgatory. Well, first of all, of course, there is no purgatory. But the very idea that we can manipulate that and that it's not God's grace alone is just appalling. So the sacrifice of the mass really was the big problem. Connected to the sacrifice of the mass, by the way, is also the institution of private masses. Now, that has kind of decreased nowadays. There are much fewer private masses than there were before Vatican 2. The liturgical reforms after Vatican 2 stressed the mass as a common thing. As a celebration of the whole people of God. Whereas before the mass was primarily seen as a sacrifice which the priest offers. So you don't really need a congregation. Actually you don't need Communion, by the way. And up to the Communion decrees of Pius X at the beginning of the 20th Century, Communion was pretty infrequent also in the Roman Catholic Church. And if you go to Italy you can still find masses where hardly anybody communes. Because the point of the mass is that you sacrifice the body and blood of Christ. And there gain forgiveness of sins and for indulgence for yourself or for your loved ones in purgatory. Against all of that, Lutherans stress: No. The mass or the Lord's Supper is Communion. The point is that people receive the body and blood of Christ for the forgiveness of sins. Not that we in some way use them to manipulate God. Now, the one thing where Lutherans and Roman Catholics agreed and are agreeing is in the real presence of the body and blood of Christ. And that's why your Evangelical friends think we are crytocatholics. Or some of the Reformed in the old times they thought: Well, Luther was a good man but he didn't go far enough. He didn't cast out the papist leaven enough. So sometimes for the Reformed, the Lutherans are somewhat a little bit -- well, you know, a little bit backwards. It just didn't make it all the way out. It didn't get out of the eggshells of papistism. And in some respects of the question of the Lord's Supper you can say Roman Catholics with all of their abuses and with all of their distortions, they at least retain something. They did retain that this is truly Christ's body and blood. And so Lutherans always said what the Roman Catholics celebrate is the Lord's Supper. Except in the case where there's a private mass and nobody communes. That's not in the frame of the institution. But it is the Lord's Supper. Whereas when they looked at the Reformed celebrations of the Lord's Supper, they said: Well, they actually destroyed the institution. The Roman Catholics deformed it. Corrupted it. But it is still there. But the Reformed destroyed it. How? Because as Luther would say: They made up a new text. They still might use the Words of Institution. But they made up a new text. That is they said: Yes, Jesus said this is my body. But really it doesn't mean this is my body. It really means this is a symbol of my body or this is just a sign of my body or whatever. So they might use the sound of the words. But they don't use the meaning of the words. In a way it's like the Mormons or the Jehovah's Witnesses saying Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They use the same sound. But is it something completely different? You know, it's like the story Dr. Scare, the elder, likes to tell. That in Pennsylvania there is a store in the Dutch country that sells knickknacks to tourists. And the store is called Gift Laden, which is a hybrid. Laden is the German word for store. But gift is of course English for something you get, a free gift. Now we have the same word spelled the same way in German. But in German gift means poison. So if a German reads that, he reads that as poison store. That sounds pretty good. So you have the same sound. But there is a totally different meaning. If you say gift laden, you mean something completely different than what I mean when I say gift laden. So also the Reformed, when they say, "This is the body of Christ," well, it is certainly English. And it might sound the same way. But it is really a different language. There is a different text. And that is why in the Formula of Concord in Solid Declaration 733, ***Kemness and Andrea quote Luther saying that the sacramentarians -- and he is speaking here primarily about Zwinglians, they don't have the Lord's Supper because they have destroyed the institution. That's why you have to stick with the institution. Again, it's the Lord's Supper. It's not something we kind of created appropriate or embellished on to make it better or relevant. So no. It's instituted by Christ. So he should know that it's relevant as it is. So you don't have to serve cookies and crackers instead of bread and wine because that's much more culturally relevant or whatever or change the Words of Institution. I saw one example of a local Presbyterian church here in town where in their worship service they actually did change the Words of Institution. So that they said, "This signifies my body. This signifies the New Testament as my blood." In a way that's honest. But of course it shows that yes, this is not the supper of our Lord. So are we Roman Catholics in the doctrine of the Lord's Supper? Certainly not. And the difference touched as really the heart of the Gospel. But the Roman Catholics have some things right, which is not a reason to recoil or to say, "Well, we have to distance from it." But to rejoice. At least some of the things are left there. Not everything is wrong just because the Roman Catholics have it. That's an irrational presence, of course. And oftentimes we feel it somewhat in our Evangelical friends and Roman Catholic friends. So there are these shifting alliances when you're in a group and discuss things. And that's just how life is. But we are certainly not Roman Catholic in our teaching of the Lord's Supper.