and presence.’ Again, ‘if God’s Word and sign is not there or is not recognized, then it is no help if God himself be there; even as Christ said of himself (John 6:63) “the flesh profiteth nothing”, because they did not heed the words which he spoke in his flesh, the words which make his body the true food.… Therefore we must not attend merely to God’s works, signs and wonders as blind reason does, but to the Word of God in them as faith does.’ Without the Word, ‘the signs and works of God’ are not there; ‘or if they are there and are seen without the Word, only by the eyes; then men only gaze at them open-mouthed and are momentarily astonished at them as at all other new things which require no faith’.1
Occasionally Luther can also put it conversely. Christ, who is truly this bread, is not to be enjoyed until ‘God speaks the Word thereby, so that you can hear him and recognize him. For what help is it to you if Christ sits in heaven or is under the form of bread? He must be imparted and served and come to words through (!) the inner and the external Word’.2 Even in this converse form, the Word makes the sacrament, that is makes it with spoken words a real sacrament. ‘A thousand times more depends on the words than on the “forms” of the sacrament, and without the words it is a mockery of God’,3 ‘idle gesture and pointing’,4 ‘a body without soul, a cask without wine, a strong-box without money, a form without substance, a sheath without dagger’.5 ‘The words belong in the ears, the signs in the mouth.’6 Or, ‘the words are his divine pledge, promise and testament. The signs are his sacrament, that is, holy signs.’7 And the conclusion in the last two passages runs: ‘much more’ depends ‘on the words than on the signs’; ‘where the preaching was not required, the Mass would never have been instituted’.8 And he continues further: ‘The signs indeed might not exist and man might still have the words and accordingly still be blessed without sacrament, but not without testament.’9
Consistently with this judgement that more depends on the Word than on the sign, Luther showed a certain indifference10 towards the question of the cup for the laity, which so exercised his contemporaries. The Hussites ‘are not right when they think it must be given’. One can equally well take only one element of the sacrament, or none at all ‘as actually the patriarchs did in the desert’.1 Even in his first tract on the Lord’s Supper, directed against the ‘signifiers’, Luther repeated that ‘the most important and the main part of the sacrament is the Word of Christ’, that ‘far more depends on these words than on the sacrament itself’, that it is ‘most necessary’ ‘in the sacrament to lead the people again to the Word.’2
But it would be a serious error if, because of this crucial importance of the concept of the Word, we should try to picture Luther on the way to supporting a mystical, spiritualistic concept of the sacrament. Criticism and negation are the same only for theological dilettanti. Luther meant negatively neither the distinction between sacrament and Word, nor that between the sacrament and the sacramental sign. Such distinction is much too meaningful not to be full of hidden implications. Parallel to the contrast between Word of God and sacramental act and sign runs the other contrast between Word of God and work of God, between promise and being and event, between promising and giving, between conferring benefit and receiving benefit,3 between the ‘blade of straw’ which God could tell us to hold up and that which it then would be by the power of this Word as sign of ‘God’s truth and presence’.4
This second contrast points clearly to its own transcending. Must not the first contrast between (the same!) Word and the sacramental act and sign (which indeed presents and proclaims the second contrast) share in the prospect of that transcending? Was not the ‘and is made’ (et fit) in the Augustinian canon, ‘the Word is joined to the element and it is made sacrament’, to be more true and more important for Luther than the critical ‘is added’ (accedit)? A further group of passages shows us that Luther’s thinking on the Word in the Lord’s Supper did of necessity proceed in this direction.
It is at once evident that in many of the passages already cited, Luther speaks, not of ‘the Word’ but of ‘the words’. However, these ‘words’ (no proof is needed) are the instituting words of Christ at the Last Supper, according to the Synoptics and Paul. These recorded words of God make the Lord’s Supper a mighty Word, the Word and Work of God, the real sacrament.1 We come now to a plain statement of the position from which alone the interpretation of the development postulated above is to be understood. ‘But I set against the decisions of all the Fathers, against the wisdom and word of all angels, men or devils, the Scripture and the Gospel. Therein it is plainly stated that the Mass is a Word and Work of God, in which God promises and manifests his grace. Here I stand, here I challenge, here I walk proudly and say, God’s Word is for me above all. God’s majesty stands beside me, therefore I yield not a hair’s breadth, though a thousand Augustines and a thousand separate churches were against me. I am certain that the true Church holds to God’s Word with me; let the so-called churches depend on men’s words.’2 Even in these recorded words of God there is a limitation. In them God ‘bears witness that remission of sins is given to all who believe; Christ’s body is given and his blood is shed for them’.3 The words contain the promise (promissio) in which Luther recognizes the Word of God. Because of the specific content of this promise, Luther explains the whole Christian message as nothing but an exposition of the words of the Lord’s Supper. ‘The preaching should be nothing but the explanation of the words of Christ when he said, This is my body.… What is the whole Gospel except an explanation of this testament?’4 ‘For this would be teaching faith and truly building the Church.’5
What then can the Mass, the sacramental act and sign to which these words of Christ apply, be, other than the testament itself as explained in the preaching, the highest actual fulfilment of those words of promise? And therefore obviously Luther can make the equation: the Mass=the New Testament, as he does in the title of the important treatise of 1520;6 or he can call the Mass ‘the centre of the eternal and new testament’ in the title of another writing of 1522.7
‘These words’ are the meaning and content of the Mass. ‘As I said, the whole virtue of the Mass consists in the words of Christ.’8 ‘If we wish to hold Mass rightly and to understand it, we must let go of everything which the eyes and all the senses may show us in the service … until we stand before the Word of Christ; and we must fully realize that with the Word, he consummates and establishes the Mass and has commanded us to consummate it. For on that Word the Mass wholly depends, with all its nature, work, use and fruit; otherwise nothing of the Mass is received.’1 ‘Therefore if you will worthily receive the sacrament and testament, see that you bring forward these living words of Christ, that you establish yourself upon them with strong faith, and that you crave what Christ has promised you in them. And so it will be yours, if you are worthy and ready.’ Thus it is necessary to believe the words of Christ and so to allow them to be true. Everything depends on the words ‘which one grasps as firmly as gold and jewels, and keeps nothing else more steadily before the eyes of the heart’.2 Luther makes everything so dependent on the ‘words’ that he can identify the Lord’s Supper with their content. ‘You see therefore that the Mass is the promise of the remission of sins made to us by God, and it is such a promise that it was confirmed by the death of the Son of God.’3 This promise it is which makes the sacraments (of both the Old and New Testaments) to be a sacrament, in distinction from a mere sign. God promises that ‘whoever has the sacrament, is to have with it this and that good’.4
The concept of ‘testament’ which was so important to Luther in 1520 was used in a brief formulation in the following way: ‘The testator, Christ, is about to die; the words which they now call words of consecration are the words of the testament; the inheritance is the forgiveness of sin promised in the testament. The heirs are all who believe.’ These four components ‘complete the testament’.5
According to this interpretation as given by Luther himself the words of the testament are not the whole ‘testament’. They point backward, back to the testator, and point forward to the inheritance and the heirs. It therefore will not and cannot be possible to persist in understanding the sacrament as testament which is only promise! The emphasis must now be put on the other side. ‘These words’ are the meaning and content