6. The familiar illustrations of the iron and fire, and body and soul, used by the Formula, favor the Reformed rather than the Lutheran theory; for the iron does not transfer its properties to the fire, nor the fire to the iron; neither are the spiritual qualities of the soul, as cognition and volition, communicated to the body, nor the material properties and functions of the body, as weight and extension, eating and drinking, to the soul: both are indeed most intimately and inseparably connected--the soul dwells in the body, and the body is the organ of the soul--but both remain essentially distinct. The same is the case with the other illustration which is borrowed from the intercommunication or inhabitation (perichoresis, immanentia, permeatio, circumincessio) of the persons of the Holy Trinity; for the peculiar properties (idia, idiotetes) of the persons are not communicated or transferred--paternity and being unbegotten (agennesia) belongs to the Father alone, sonship (gennesia, filiatio) to the Son alone, and procession (ekporeusis, processio) to the Holy Ghost alone.
7. The ubiquity of the body is logically necessary for the hypothesis of consubstantiation, and both stand and fall together. For the eucharistic multipresence must be derived either from a perpetual miracle (performed through the priestly consecration, or by the power of the Holy Ghost, both of which the Lutherans reject), [648] or from an inherent quality of the body itself, which enables it to be present wherever and whenever it is actually partaken of by the mouth of the communicants.
8. But ubiquity proves too much for consubstantiation by extending the eating of Christ to every meal (though this is inconsistently denied), and depriving the eucharistic presence of all specific value. Yea, it is fatal to it, and leads, we will not say to the Calvinistic, but rather to a crypto-pantheistic theory of the eucharist; [649] for a body which is intrinsically and perpetually omnipresent must be so spiritual that it can only be spiritually present and spiritually be partaken of by faith. [650]
9. Ubiquity is not only unscriptural, but antiscriptural, and conflicts with the facts of Christ's local limitations while on earth, his descent into Hades, his forty days after the resurrection, his ascension to heaven, his visible return to judgment. We freely admit that Christ's glorified body is not subject to the laws of earthly substances or confined to a particular locality; it is a 'spiritual' body (comp. 1 Cor. xv.), with its own laws of rest and locomotion, which transcend our present knowledge; nevertheless it is and ever remains a body, as real as the resurrection body of saints which will be fashioned like unto it (summorphon to somati tes doxes autou), and as heaven itself is real, from which Christ will return 'in like manner' as the apostles 'saw him go into heaven.' The ubiquitarian exegesis here runs into an ultra-Zwinglian spiritualism to save the literalism with which it started. But, feeling its own weakness, it falls back again at last upon the literal understanding of the esti in the words of institution.
10. This first and last resort of consubstantiation is given up by the ablest modern exegetes, [651] who agree in the following decisive results: (a) That the disputed word esti was not even spoken by our Lord in Aramaic, and can have no conclusive weight, (b) That the substantive verb may designate a symbolical as well as a real relation between the subject and the predicate, as is evident from the nature of the case and from innumerable passages of Scripture, (c) That in this case the literal interpretation would lead to transubstantiation rather than the semi-figurative (synecdochical) consubstantiation; since Christ does not say what the Lutheran hypothesis would require: 'This is my body and bread,' 'This is my blood and wine (or in, with, and under the bread and wine).' (d) That the figurative or metaphorical interpretation (whether in the Zwinglian or Calvinistic sense) is made necessary in connection with the touto for houtos, poterion for oinos, or aima, as well as by the surroundings of the institution of the Lord's Supper, viz.: the nature of the typical passover, the living, personal presence of our Lord, with his body still unbroken and his blood still unshed, which could not be literally eaten and drunk by his disciples.
This, of course, only settles the exegetical basis, and still leaves room for different doctrinal views of this sacred ordinance, into which we can not here enter. [652]
11. The Lutheran doctrine of the eucharist overlooks the omnipresence of the Holy Spirit, and substitutes for it the corporeal presence of Christ. It is the Holy Spirit who brings the believer in and out of the sacrament into a living union and communion with the whole Christ, and makes the perpetual virtue and efficacy of his crucified body on the cross, i.e., his atoning sacrifice, and of his glorified body in heaven, available for our spiritual benefit.
12. Finally, as regards the two states of Christ, the Reformed Christology is right in making the pre-existent Logos (Logos asarkos) the subject of the kenosis, or self-humiliation, instead of the human nature (or the Logos ensarkos), which was never before en morphe theou, and consequently could not renounce it in any way. The incarnation itself is the beginning of the humiliation. In this interpretation of Phil. ii. 7 the Reformed Church is sustained not only by Chrysostom and other fathers, but also by the best modern exegetes of all denominations, including Lutherans. [653]
Art. IX. Of Christ's Descent into Hell..--The fact of a real descent of the whole person of Christ, the God-man, after his death, into the real hell (not a metaphorical hell, nor the grave, nor the limbus patrum) is affirmed, and its object defined to be the defeat of Satan and the deliverance of believers from the power of death and the devil; but all curious questions about the mode are deprecated and left for the world to come.
Art. X. Of Church Usages and Ceremonies, called Adiaphora.--The observance of ceremonies and usages neither commanded nor forbidden in the Word of God, should be left to Christian freedom, but should be firmly resisted when they are forced upon us as a part of divine service (Gal. ii. 4, 5; v. 1; Acts xvi. 3; Rom. xiv. 6; 1 Cor. vii. 18; Col. ii. 16).
This article was a virtual condemnation of Melanchthon's course in the Interim controversy.
Art. XI. Of God's Foreknowledge and Election.--No serious controversy took place on this doctrine in the Lutheran Church, except at Strasburg between Zanchi and Marbach (1561). The rigid predestinarianism of Luther and the Flacianists quietly gave way to the doctrine of the universality of divine grace, while yet the anthropological premises of the Augustinian system were retained (in Art. I. and II.).
The Formula teaches that there is a distinction between foreknowledge (præscientia, prævisio, Vorsehung, Matt. x. 29; Psa. cxxxix. 16; Isa. xxxvii. 28) and foreordination (prædestinatio, electio, ewige Wahl, Eph. i. 5); that foreknowledge pertains alike to the good and the evil, and is not the cause of sin and destruction; that foreordination refers only to the children of God; that this predestination of the elect is 'eternal, infallible, and unchangeable,' and is the ultimate and unconditional cause of their salvation; that God, though he elects only a portion, sincerely desires all men to be saved, and invites them by his Word to the salvation in Christ; that the impenitent perish by their own guilt in rejecting the gospel; that Christians should seek the eternal election, not in the secret but in the revealed will of God, and avoid presumptuous and curious questions.
Thus the particularism of election and the universalism of vocation, the absolute inability of fallen man (Art. II.), and the guilt of the unbeliever for rejecting what he can not accept, are illogically combined. The obvious contradiction between this article and the second has already been pointed out. [654]
The authors felt the speculative difficulties of this dogma, and emphasized the practical side, which amounts to this: that believers are saved by the free grace of God, while unbelievers are lost by their own guilt in rejecting the grace sincerely offered to them. Later Lutheran divines, like John Gerhard, labored hard to show that God not only sincerely desires the salvation of all men alike, but that he also actually gives an opportunity to all men even in this present life. [655] But the argument fails with regard to the heathen, who form the greatest part of the race even to this day (not to speak of the world before Christ): and hence the Lutheran view of the actual universality of the offer of grace necessitates an essential change of the orthodox doctrine of the middle state, as far as those are concerned who never heard of the gospel in this world.
Art. XII. Of Several Heresies and Sects.--This article rejects the peculiar tenets of the Anabaptists, Schwenkfeldians, New Arians, and Antitrinitarians, who never embraced the Augsburg Confession.
To the second part of the Formula there is added a Catalogue of Testimonies from the Scriptures and the fathers (Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, Cyril of Alexandria, John of Damascus) concerning the divine majesty of the human nature of Christ, in support of the doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum, as taught in Art. VIII. This Appendix was prepared by Andreæ and Chemnitz; but it has no symbolical authority, and is often omitted from the Book of Concord. [656]