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Although Luther and Zwingli sat just meters apart, one might say they were separated by a crevasse. With chalk, Luther wrote “Hoc Est Corpus Meum” (This is My Body) on the refectory table, covering this inscription with red velvet as a priest might veil the chalice. When 15 Articles of Marburg were drafted, 14 found common ground. The 15th stated that “… at present we are not agreed as to whether the true body and blood are bodily present in the bread and wine.” The failure was monumental, driving a wedge between Lutheran and Reformed. Luther was viewed as too literal and mystical, and Zwingli as overly historical and conceptual. Either way, 50 theologians could not slay Chimera; she remained a fire-breathing enigma. But what was the true nature of the impasse? Rhetoric aside, it was not chemical: no one believed that wafers become carpaccio. Sola scriptura notwithstanding, the dispute was not ultimately scriptural. Anyone familiar with The Summa Theologiæ knew that both Zwingli’s prooftext (“the flesh profits nothing”) and his argument regarding God’s location (“at the right hand of God”) were lifted from it. Both are drawn from Part III, Question 75, Article 1: Whether the body of Christ be in this sacrament in very truth, or merely as in a figure or sign? Likewise, Luther’s chalked response is precisely St. Thomas’ answer—to which Aquinas added, “He is the Truth, He lieth not.” Using Aristotle’s distinction between substantia (essence or being) and accidens (non essential properties), Aquinas taught that the elements could not be naively equated with flesh and blood. “The presence of Christ’s true body and blood in this sacrament cannot be detected by sense, nor understanding, but by faith alone, which rests upon Divine authority.” Is this written by Luther or by Aquinas? (It is Aquinas.) The Marburg Colloquy failed, more precisely, because the Eucharist became a proxy for the nature of Divine Presence. How can the Transcendent (Godhead) be present in the imminent (bread and wine)? For Luther, the Eucharistic problem derives from the Christological problem and turns on its solution; a paradox in the former allows a paradox in the latter. Both are impenetrable by reason, but acceptable by faith. Zwingli rejected paradoxical (mystical) union, while Luther

rejected disembodied (symbolic) union. Zwingli was willing to view the Lord’s Supper as a memorial, akin to Passover, a historical event to be evermore “taken to heart.” Luther refused to slacken the super verbal force of Corpus Meum . He thought it a fool’s errand to insist on resolving a paradox that is both inherent in Christ’s nature (the God Man) and implicit in His parting words ( my body, my blood). Luther was guarding the portal to a starkly real, bodily encounter with God. The “right hand of God” (where Zwingli had geo-located the Logos) is everywhere. Hence, Christ really is where He says He is. Andreas Osiander, witnessing the debate at Marburg Castle, saw the implications. Christ’s body and blood (whether real or symbolic) pointed to Christ’s promise —the promise of “I in you” (see John 6:56, 14:20, 15:4, 17:23, 26). Osiander must have hoped Luther would more vigorously extend the logic of Corpus Meum to the bodies of the born again. For, in fact, Luther was tantalizingly close to doing so. First, he had written of the paradox of Incarnation; is it not paradoxical that God should descend from heaven, enter the womb, and become God-With-Us? Second, he had written of the relation of human soul to body: “Behold the soul, which is a single creature, and yet at the same time is present throughout the body, even in the smallest toe, so that when I prick the smallest member of the body with a needle, [I] affect the entire soul, and the whole man quivers.” Third, he queried what happens when Christ enters the heart through faith: “You must answer that you have the true Christ; not that he sits in there, as one sits on a chair, but as he is at the right hand of the Father… your heart truly feels his presence, and through the experience of faith you know for certainty that he is there ” (Luther, 1959, pp. 338-340.) If Christ is “bodily present” in the Supper, and bodily present in the heart (where He is felt and experienced), then surely there is no chasm between me and my body! Or is there? When Osiander fleshed out his view of Christ-in-us in 1550, the idea was buried alive. While Osiander died in 1552, Lutheran and Calvinist counter-argument went on for decades. For Osiander, faith was the very vehicle of union; “… faith is the medium of the indwelling of Christ in the human soul.” Once Christ comes to dwell

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