Tag: Martin Luther

Herman Sasse on the present Christ

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The Church that Luther believed was the Church of the real presence. … Perhaps there are many among us who have…taken offence that Luther remained so stubborn in the strife over the Lord’s Supper concerning the meaning of the words of institution: ‘This is my body.’ That is not his obstinate nature but his great worry that the Church of the Reformation would lose that upon which the Church has always lived, … If Christ is in a heavenly location far from this world, where he has only left behind authority, orders, and commands; if we confuse him with our fantasy, and must visualize him with our faith; if he is only present according to his divine nature, and not also according to his human nature as the God-man, who has taken on our poor flesh and blood, and is present with us according to his humanity, as he is present with the Father according to his divinity, then we are a lost little band in this world. Because, we have to admit that without him we are nothing, that without him and his presence, the Church is a helpless, poor, despairing band of men.

from Witness (2013), 318. Originally preached 1943.

See also Luther on the present Christ.

The Only Weapon …

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Woe to the church that uses other weapons, and would even borrow them from the world! She is no longer a Church of her Lord. No theological learning, no ‘Christian culture,’ no wise church politicking, and no attempt to win ‘influence’ in the world conquers the world for Christ and defeats the kingdom of darkness, but the Word of God alone.

from Herman Sasse, Witness (2013), 204. Originally preached 1936.

In short, I will preach it, teach it, write it, but I will constrain no man by force, for faith must come freely without compulsion. Take myself as an example. I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything. Had I desired to foment trouble, I could have brought great bloodshed upon Germany; indeed, I could have started such a game that even the emperor would not have been safe. But what would it have been? Mere fool’s play. I did nothing; I let the Word do its work.

from Martin Luther, 2nd of the Invocavit Sermons, 1522

Consider also – D. Z. Phillips on Religion and Culture

Martin Luther on the present Christ

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See how different Christ is from his successors, although they all would wish to be his vicars. A man is a vicar only when his superior is absent. If the pope rules, while Christ is absent and does not dwell in his heart, what else is he but a vicar of Christ? What is the church under such a vicar but a mass of people without Christ? Indeed, what is such a vicar but an antichrist and an idol? How much more properly did the apostles call themselves servants of the present Christ and not vicars of an absent Christ?

from “An Open Letter to Pope Leo X” (1520) in Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings. Ed. Tim Lull (1989), 594.

[Polemically stated, to be sure, but worth bearing in mind the distinction between serving a present Christ and standing in for an absent Christ.]

Justification in Lutheran Theology

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On the Role of Justification in Lutheran Theology Today’s post is prompted by the following remark from the contemporary American Lutheran moral theologian Gilbert Meilaender. However much some contemporary Lutherans have attempted to think of Lutheranism as a freestanding theological system, it can really be understood only as a correction within the Catholic tradition. It degenerates […]