§ 111. THE EUCHARISTIC THEORIES COMPARED. 677
is forever fruitful and efficacious.1_ He denied the corporal eating as Capernaitic and useless, but he admitted a spiritual participation in the crucified body and blood by faith. Christ is both “host and feast” in the holy communion.
His last word on the subject of the eucharist (in the Confession to King Francis I.) is this : —
‘‘ We believe that Christ is truly present in the Lord’s Supper; yea, that there is no communion without such presence. . . . We believe that the true body of Christ is eaten in the communion, not in a gross and carnal manner, but in a sacramental and spiritual manner by the religious, believing and pious heart.’ 2
This passage comes so near the Calvinistic view that it can hardly be distinguished from it. Calvin did injustice to Zwingli, when once in a confidential letter he called his earlier eucharistic doctrine “ profane.”? But Zwingli in his polemic writings laid so much stress upon the absence of Christ’s body, that the positive truth of His spiritual presence was not sufficiently emphasized. Undoubtedly the Lord’s Supper is a commemoration of the historic Christ of the past, but it is also a vital communion with the ever-living Christ who is both in heaven and in his church on earth.
Zwingli’s theory did not pass into any of the leading Reformed confessions; but it was adopted by the Arminians,
1 He expressed at Marburg, and in his two confessions to Charles I. and to Francis L., his full belief in the divinity of Christ in the sense of the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds. Dorner says (I. c., p. 302): ‘‘ Dass Zwingli Christum gegenwartig denkt, ist unleugbar; er sei bei diesem Mahle Wirth und Gastmahl (hospes et epulum).’’
2 Christum credimus vere esse in cena, immo non esse Domini cenam nisi Christus adsit . . . Adserimus igitur non sic carnaliter et crasse manducari corpus Christi in cena, ut isti perhibent, sed verum Christi corpus credimus in cena sacramentaliter et spiritualiter edi, a religiosa, fideli et sancta mente, quomodo et divus Chrysostomus sentit. Et hec est brevis summa nostre, immo non nostre, sed ipsius veritatis, sententia de hac controversia. Niemeyer, Collectio Confess., pp. 71, 72.
3 Letter to Viret, September, 1542: ‘‘ De scriptis Zwinglii sic sentire, ut sentis, {ἰδὲ permitto. Neque enim omnia legi. Et fortassis sub finem vite retractavit ac correxit in melius que temere initio exciderant. Sed in scriptis prioribus memini, quam profana sit de Sacramentis sententia.’’ Opera, XI. 438.
678 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1530.
Socinians, Unitarians, and Rationalists, and obtained for a time a wide currency in all Protestant churches, even the Lutheran. But the Rationalists deny what Zwingli strongly believed, the divinity of Christ, and thus deprive the Lord’s Supper of its deeper significance and power.
III. THE CALVINIsTIC THEORY.— Calvin was the greatest divine and best writer among the Reformers, and his “ Institutes of the Christian Religion” have almost the same importance for Reformed theology as the “Summa” of Thomas Aquinas for that of the Roman Church. He organized the ideas of the Reformation into a clear, compact system, with the freshness and depth of genius, the convincing power of logic, and a complete mastery of the Latin and French languages.! |
His theory of the Lord’s Supper occupies a via media between Luther and Zwingli; he combines the realism of the one with the spiritualism of the other, and saves the substance for which Luther contended, but avoids the objectionable form. He rests on the exegesis of Zwingli. He accepts the symbolical meaning of the words of institution; he rejects the corporal presence, the oral manducation, the participation of the body and blood by unbelievers, and the ubiquity of Christ’s body. But at the same time he strongly asserts a spiritual real presence, and a spiritual real participation of Christ’s body and blood by faith. While Zwingli dwelt chiefly on the negative, he emphasizes the positive, element. While the mouth receives the visible signs of bread and wine, the soul receives by faith, and by faith alone, the things signified and sealed thereby; that is, the body and blood of
1 Henri Martin (Histoire de France, Tom. VIII. 188 sq.) says of Calvin’s Institutes that they gave a religious code to the Reform in France and in a great part of Europe,” and that it is ‘‘ une vrate ‘ Somme’ théologique, ou se trouve impliqué Vordre civil méme, et qui n’est pas, comme celle de Thomas W Aquin, le résumé @’un systeme établi, mais le programme et le code dun systéme ἃ établir. . . . Luther attire : Calvin impose et retient. . . . Volonté
et logique, voila Calvin”’ (p. 185). He calls him “le premier écrivain par la durée et Vinfluence de sa langue, de son style.”