Four Views on the Lord’s Supper: Consubstantiation

by John Hartley

The Lutheran doctrine of the Lord’s Supper is frequently described as consubstantiation. Though Lutherans do not prefer this description, it captures a key distinction being made in their eucharistic theology.

Lutherans assert that along with (con) the bread and cup in the Supper, the humanity of the risen Christ (substance) is locally present. This means Christ’s humanity is not just seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, it is also at the table. The humanity has received qualities of divinity, especially omnipresence. Christ’s humanity can be locally present in the Supper in his churches throughout the earth asserts the Lutheran.

It is important to understand this Lutheran teaching is not the same as the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. Both Lutherans and the Reformed reject transubstantiation, the Roman doctrine that the bread and wine cease to be bread and wine and become entirely the body and blood of Christ’s humanity. Herein grace swallows up nature and the sign (bread and wine) ceases to be a sign.

For the Lutheran and Reformed, however, the bread remains bread, the wine remains wine, and the sign remains present. The thing signified is also present for Lutherans and the Reformed – that is, the humanity of Christ and the benefits of his death – but both groups differ on exactly how the humanity of Christ is present.  Lutherans insist the true body of Christ is physically present (Formula of Concord, Art. VII), whereas the Reformed insist the true body of Christ is spiritually present (Westminster, 29.7; Heidelberg 77, 79.).

The Lutheran language then is that Christ’s body and blood is in, with, and under the bread and wine. The difficulty of this teaching is it redefines what a real human body is. The properties of a human nature do not include ubiquity, that is, the ability for a body to be in an infinite number of places at the same time. This is a property of divinity, not humanity. It is a confusion of the two natures of Christ to assert that his humanity has now received the properties of his divinity.

By making Christ’s risen humanity more than a real physical human body in this way, Lutherans actually weaken the agreement between what Christ assumed and what he redeemed. If his humanity at some point becomes unlike ours, because of the communication of divine attributes to it, then some kind of distance enters between us and him in human nature.

Christ’s humanity is of course more excellent than our own in that he was always without sin and is even now glorified, but his humanity is not of a nature different than our own. As Italian reformer Peter Martyr Vermigli wrote: “We too confess that the body of Christ transcends everything human, but it does not thereby cease being the body of a man. It still retains its limbs, shape, limits, and limitation. It transcends everything human which pertains to the weakness, infirmity, and necessities of this life.”

By their sacramental theology, Lutherans end up placing a double weight of hiddenness on the body of Christ. He is hidden in heaven, ascended bodily, as all agree (1 Peter 1:8), but they would have us confess he is also hidden when his body is present locally at the table. This is radically unlike the presence of his body in the 40 days after his resurrection. When he appeared to his disciples then his human nature was among them, in a place, in a form, visible and conscripted, like our own human nature. Yet in the Supper the Lutherans would have us believe his bodily presence is locally in our midst but only as a phantom.

It may very well be, as Carl Trueman suggested, that Lutherans fear the Reformed are taking the presence of Christ out of the Supper by asserting that his humanity remains in the heavens, supposedly making the Supper an empty sign. If there is no feeding upon the real body and blood of Christ, the goodness and kindness of God toward sinners is shattered. A valid concern.

It is not the case, however, that the Reformed deny such a feeding. We confess and believe the body and blood of Christ are really but spiritually present to the faith of believers, just as the elements themselves are present to our outward senses. We really receive and feed upon Christ knowing only life begets life. But the Lutherans, as Calvin said, “do not comprehend the mode of descent by which he raises us up to himself” – the Holy Spirit (Inst. IV.17.16). The Reformed then must labor more tirelessly and carefully to show by the scriptures that we indeed feed upon his body and blood (WLC, 168).

John Hartley has been pastor of Apple Valley Presbyterian Church since 2010, having previously been a pastor for 10 years in Vermont. He is a Wisconsin native and a graduate of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee as well as Dallas Theological Seminary. John lives with his wife Jen and their five children.

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