Melanchthon

On the Eucharistic Prayer

by Oliver K. Olson

 

       

PRINCIPLE 43

 

            A new publication called Principles for Worship, under the direction of ELCA Director for Worship, Michael L. Burk, gives us a preview of the new hymnal. Its 95 Principles are also an indication of the extent the Roman Catholic and Episcopalian “liturgical renewal” has captured the Lutheran Church. The most serious break with Lutheran liturgical tradition is Principle 43--the opposite of what Martin Luther taught.

 

The biblical words of institution declare God’s action and invitation. They are set within the context of the Great Thanksgiving. This eucharistic prayer proclaims and celebrates the gracious work of God in creation, redemption, and sanctification. .[1]

 

            An important aspect of the Reformation was Luther’s abandonment of  that “context.” ”What is more than the Word,”  he wrote, “ we should consider as against the word of Christ.”[2]  He was warning precisely against what “Principle 43” introduces--the canon of the mass, lately re-named “eucharistic prayer” and sometimes “The Great Thanksgiving.”

 

            The old notion about the mass, explained in a thousand Lutheran confirmation classes, was that the Roman Catholic priest offered the sacrifice of Christ again. But Roman Catholics have a brand-new doctrine that Lutherans should know about. They now teach that the mass is not a repetition, but a re-presentation of Christ’s sacrifice.  “Re-presentation”—in spite of plain common sense about chronological time—means that the faithful at mass are actually at Calvary.

 

            Since Christ is always dying humans, by sacrificing themselves, can take part in the crucifixion. “What is necessary,” wrote Dom Odo Casel, a major influence on the Second Vatican Council, “is a living, active sharing in the redeeming deed of Christ.”[3] Prominent theologian, Karl Rahner, teaches the same: the sacrifice of the Mass exists only to effect a participation in Christ’s supreme act.[4] In his Liturgy and Doctrine: The Doctrinal Basis of the Liturgical Movement, Charles Davis writes:

 

But our union with Christ is not established simply by faith in his message, but by effectual contact with his redemptive acts. The saving activity by which the Church continues the work of Christ does not consist solely in the Word as preached but in the Word as sacramentally efficacious. So in our assembly, the reading and preaching of the Word is followed by the Eucharistic celebration, in which the mystery of Christ’s redemptive work is sacramentally renewed, so that we can take part in it.

 

            It is not possible to adopt the Eucharistic prayer without eventually altering  our doctrine of Baptism—and what it means to be part of the Body of Christ. Lutherans believe that a Christian is simul justus et peccator—at the same time just and a sinner. To the extent that a Christian is still a sinner, it is obvious that he cannot participate in the atonement.  Charles Davis explains the “eucharistic” understanding of baptism:

 

The Church owes its existence to the mystery of Christ. It is founded on his death and resurrection. And its enduring existence is secured by the sacramental renewal of that mystery. The Eucharist is the event by which the Church is given existence and permanence in different times and places as its reality is extended through time and space. Through the Eucharist Christ builds up his mystical body. The effect of the Eucharist is the corporate reality of our union with Christ and with each other. Certainly, baptism establishes this union in an initial way. But it does so only because it depends itself upon the Eucharist, the centre of the sacramental order. Baptism exists as a first step towards the Eucharist. It unites us to Christ and the Church, but by relating us to the Eucharist. The Eucharist is, as it were, already active in us through baptism. Union with Christ and the Church remains the proper effect of the Eucharist, which alone gives it in full.[5]                                                                                                       

           

            Baptism, therefore, according to that logic, is an initiation which makes the believer totally innocent, qualified to meld their self-sacrifice with Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. That is obviously a different view from the evangelical- Lutheran understanding of a Christian as righteous, but at the same time a sinner. .

 

            The ancient insight, lex orandi lex credendi should serve as a warning: doctrine is shaped by liturgical practice. The change of direction called for in the “context” named in Principle 43, cannot avoid a change in the doctrine of baptism. It is quite impossible to believe that anyone who is just but at the same time a sinner can participate in the crucifixion!

           

            Once “Principle 43” is accepted, there is no possible way in the long run of avoiding that new Roman Catholic doctrine of “re-presentation.” Curiously enough, before the ELCA merger, the ALC already officially adopted the new Roman Catholic doctrine.

 

It [Holy Communion] is anamnesis, a word rendered somewhat inadequately as “memorial.” This means not only a reminder of Jesus’ life and death, but the present re-actualization (becoming a present reality) of God’s deed in Christ. It is the projection of God’s saving act into the present life of the congregation.[6]

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No Lutheran pastor would preach in favor of “works righteousness.” But adopting “Eucharistic theology” through the back door is worse: “participation in the redeeming deed of Christ” is downright blasphemous.

 

            Participation is possible only if the crucifixion is still going on. “Principle 43” brings with it precisely that notion--that Calvary is still going on, that  somewhere up there Christ is still bleeding. That is what Roman Catholics mean when they say that Christ’s sacrifice is perpetual. Chapter II of the Vatican II Constitution, Sacrosanctum Concilium decrees:

 

At the Last Supper, on the night when He was betrayed, our Saviour instituted the Eucharistic sacrifice of His Body and Blood. He did this in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the Cross throughout the centuries…[7]

 

But, as we learn from Hebrews  9.12, Christ was sacrificed once for all, which means the sacrifice at Calvary is not perpetual. Long-time Roman Catholic Tom Kristopeit of Littleton, CO, reports that he became Protestant when in a bible study of Hebrews that Christ’s crucifixion was “once for all.”[8]  That the atonement is finished is clearly reflected in Luther’s doctrine of the mass as testament. At communion, the believer does not participate at Calvary. Instead, the believer is granted the results from Calvary.

 

            But instead of including a rationale, Principles for Worship merely prints a footnote appealing to the authority of Melanchthon’s  Apology of the Augsburg Confession XXIV, 76. As the essay Armand Boehme argues in the current issue of Logia,[9] the appeal to Apology 24 is the opposite of what Philipp Melanchthon taught. Isn’t any appeal to a confessional document a good sign?

 

            The Red hymnal arbritarily pronounced “proper”[10] the very prayer that Luther denounced as improper. Nor was the Green Hymnal an improvement. Its liturgical architecture was not determined  by the Lutheran Confessions but by tradition. Explaining his hymnal Dr. Brand, the chief organizer, wrote:

 

Ecumenical commitment was mandated by the ecumenical nature of the liturgical tradition itself. From our beginnings, we Lutherans remained within the liturgical tradition, and no matter what the Lutheran confessions may imply, the liturgical tradition is a major component of the tradition of the church.[11]

 

            As the quotation shows, then, the theology of the LBW is not built on the Confessions, but on tradition, in the manner of Gregory Dix. “But it is important for the understanding of the whole future history of the liturgy, Dix wrote, “to grasp the fact that eucharistic worship from the outset was not based on scripture at all, whether of the Old or New Testament, but solely on tradition.”[12] 

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            Melanchthon had a completely different view. Far from authorizing “the tradition of eucharistic worship” Apology XXIV insists that “…without the authority of Scripture it is not safe to institute forms of worship in the church.”[13] Pleading a long liturgical tradition and ecumenical unity, the “Lutheran liturgical renewal” movement worked to restore in Lutheran liturgies and hymnals the very prayer that Luther called “against Christ.”

 

It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that the common liturgy for a united Anglican, Lutheran, Roman Catholic Church is already there. The difference lies more in who leads the liturgical celebration and how the structures are used than in the liturgical orders themselves.[14]

 

                                                                                                                       

 

MELANCHTHON DENOUNCES THE EUCHARISTIC PRAYER

 

            In fact, “Principle 43” is not the first appeal to Apology 24. Sixteenth-century Elector Joachim II of Brandenburg did exactly the same—and during Melanchthon’s lifetime. A revised Eucharistic prayer ordered up by the elector was presented at a conference at Jüterbog in 1548.[15] He and his enthusiastic chaplain, Johann Agricola, counted on  Melanchthon’s support. “If Luther were alive now,” burbled Agricola,, “and only heard that the mass…was only a commemorative and eucharistic sacrifice he would live ten years longer for joy.” [16]

 

            They counted on Melanchthon’s support. After all, in the Augsburg Confession itself, he wrote good things about the mass.

 

Our churches are falsely accused of abolishing the mass. In fact, the mass is retained among us and is celebrated with the greatest reverence. Almost all the customary ceremonies are also retained…[17]

 

 Joachim’s argument was precisely the same as “Principle 43.”

 

In the Apology in the ‘30’s it was known and permitted that the mass is a sacrifice of thanksgiving and a perennial sacrifice.[18]

           

            The Elector’s argument has been echoed recently in the Missouri Synod. The Missourian, Don Richard Stuckwisch wrote:

 

Lutherans also need to get over their knee-jerk reactions to any talk of sacrifice, which reactions demonstrate (again) a lack of knowledge and familiarity with their own Lutheran confessional heritage (as articulated in Apology XXIV).[19]

 

            What Stuckwisch ridicules as a “knee-jerk reaction” is the profound Lutheran aversion, rooted scripture, to the idea that Holy Communion is something that the believer does. According to Carl Friedrich Wislöff:

 

Whereas the Lord’s Supper, according to the words of institution, is purely a gift of God, the mass had been turned into a kind of performance on the part of man. Here, where God himself sets the table and everything is completely prepared that, on our part, nothing else is asked than a thirsty soul, humility, and readiness to receive, men now began, instead, to busy themselves with their own preparation, their own worthiness before God and their own expressions of piety. The mass was simply made to serve that work-righteousness which is the religion of the natural man.[20]

 

            The Lutheran tradition was expressed classically by Ragnar Bring:  “If there is the slightest thought that Communion is an offering to God, a sacred act in God’s direction, then the Gospel is rendered null and void at once.[21]

 

            We are being faced with a crucial choice. The order of the Communion service is not an adiaphoron, but a doctrinal matter. According to Professor Oswald Bayer of Tübingen warns that in the eucharistic prayer the verba testamenti are made into a quotation, and that in the very term, “eucharist,” the doctrine of justification is endangered.[22]  Our confessional heritage, it is clear, is far from being “articulated” in Apology XXIV. The article does not give “permission” for anything:

 

Article XXIV 76. There are also statements about thanksgiving, like that very beautiful statement of Cyprian concerning those who receive the sacrament in godly fashion. He says, “In returning thanks to the Giver for such an abundant blessing, piety divides its thanks between what has been given and what has been forgiven.” That is, piety focuses on what has been given and what has been forgiven; it compares the greatness of God’s blessings with the greatness of our ills, our sin and our death, and it gives thanks. From this the term, “eucharist” arose in the church.

           

            Joachim’s own motivation was reinforced by pressure from Emperor Charles V himself, who was determined to force Lutherans to accept the eucharistic prayer. He wanted Joachim’s help in convincing Elector Moritz of Saxony to accept the prayer required in the emperor’s 1548 “Interim” law. Under imperial pressure, therefore,  Joachim’s prayer was edited. Lutherans might accept the sacrifice of the mass, he thought, if only prayers to the saints were omitted.

 

We have diligently surveyed the canon and corrected it so that it in such a manner that it conforms to the doctrine of the mass sacrifice drawn up in the Interim, and that the invocation of saints is omitted[23].

 

            A “commemorative and eucharistic sacrifice,” was, indeed, being talked about for a while by Roman Catholics in 1548. But following the Council of Trent, it should be noted, Roman Catholic priests did not teach about “eucharist.” Instead, they taught that the mass repeated Christ’s sacrifice.” Only recently, in the tradition of Odo Casel, which triumphed at Vatican II, have Roman Catholics returned to a “eucharistic sacrifice.” They often justify the notion, e.g, with philosophical explanations of the meaning of the church’s action of “remembering.”

 

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MELANCHTHON THEREBY REJECTED “EUCHARIST” AS “ACTION.”

 

            Those who crafted the LBW thought that Luther should have known better—that he should have known that the Sacrament of the Altar was an action to be done rather than Christ’s gracious giving of his body and blood to penitent sinner.

 

He [Luther] views the sacrament in terms of the bread and wine alone, not as an action involving bread and wine. He cannot get beyond the western preoccupation with the elements, and so the Sacrament remains a ‘thing’ to be received or offered, rather than an act to be celebrated.[24]

 

            Professor Michael Aune of the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary thinks that Melanchthon did know better.

 

Melanchthon claimed the heart is addressed and moved simultaneously by God through what is said, seen, and done. It is both God’s work and a quite human event—one that is ritually enacted and experienced.[25]

.                      

            But Dr. Aune has misunderstood Melanchthon. Far from being “moved by joy,” Melanchthon denounced the prayer as “something that could not be received without impiety.”[26] The eucharistic prayer, he judged, is “wicked.”

,

The controversy about the canon was very important to me, and I give thanks that I am successful so that that wicked thing has not been demanded of the pastors.[27]

           

Since rejecting the Eucharistic prayer means agreeing with Luther that the sacrament is totally one-sided—a gift, and not the church’s action--Dr. Aune is mistaken that Melanchthon supported “enaction.”    

 

            Because of Melanchthon’s denunciation of the Eucharistic prayer, a decision was postponed.[28] Unlike the controversy on good works, for example, it was not discussed further because of the successful military Revolt of 1552 of the Lutheran princes against the emperor. Charles V is long dead, but his campaign for the eucharistic prayer has been renewed in the name of “liturgical renewal.” It is an indication of how indifferent our liturgical leaders have become they promote exactly what Luther called “against the word of Christ,’ and Melanchthon called “wicked.”

 

Looking back at the Jüterbog conference, Melanchthon wrote:

 

The action at Leipzig [the Leipzig Interim] makes no change in the church because the contention concerning the mass and the eucharistic prayer is postponed for further consideration.[29]

 

If we accept the prayer, Theodore Tappert once said, we will have to fight the Reformation all over again. By preventing acceptance of the Eucharistic prayer, Melanchthon believed, he had saved the Reformation . Whom shall we take as authority, Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon or the unfounded “Principle 43”?

 

 

 

Oliver K. Olson taught, most recently, Reformation Studies at Marquette University.  He also reorganized the Lutheran Quarterly in 1977. 

He is the author of the biography, “Matthias Flacius:  Survival of Luther’s Reform”