Lutheran Quotations

"We must be clear about the fact that there is a profound difference in the understanding of the..."

Sun, 19 May 2013 08:01:01 -0500

“We must be clear about the fact that there is a profound difference in the understanding of the Lord’s Supper here. Not only is the meaning of the Words of Institution in dispute between Lutherans and Reformed, but from this difference also emerges a totally different understanding of the practice of the Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Supper can and must have a different purpose in the Reformed Church than among Lutherans. It can and must, as a human act of confession, become a means toward union. That is what it has become in the Reformed and in the Crypto-Calvinist churches of our day. While for us Lutherans—just as for the Catholic Churches of the East and West—the Sacrament of the Altar can only be the goal of unification, it stands firm for all Reformed Churches and those churches influenced by the Reformed spirit that it is the means of unification that Christ willed.”

- Herman Sasse - Letters to Lutheran Pastors - Volume 1

"If our church right at this point has always taken this most seriously and has not admitted to the..."

Sat, 18 May 2013 08:01:06 -0500

“If our church right at this point has always taken this most seriously and has not admitted to the Lutheran celebration of the Lord’s Supper those who reject the Lutheran doctrine of the Sacrament, it has not thereby anticipated the last judgment. In the ancient church the communicant, to whom the consecrated elements were given with the words “The body of Christ” and “The blood of Christ,” answered with his “Amen.” How can one who is Reformed say Amen to the Lutheran distribution formula? He must take offense at it. Who gives us the right to mislead someone into an unworthy reception of the Lord’s Supper in that he does not discern the body of the Lord (1 Cor. 11:29), and to whom would we want to be accountable for it? Is that Christian love?”

- Herman Sasse - Letters to Lutheran Pastors - Volume 1

"Something else also belongs in our instruction of the congregation about the Sacrament of the Altar..."

Fri, 17 May 2013 08:01:17 -0500

“Something else also belongs in our instruction of the congregation about the Sacrament of the Altar according to Article XXIV of the Augsburg Confession: “The people are also given instruction about other false teaching concerning the sacrament.” That is not to be avoided. The condemnations cannot be separated from the positive explanation of the doctrine.”

- Herman Sasse - Letters to Lutheran Pastors - Volume 1

"What totally new substance our confirmation instruction would receive if it again became sacramental..."

Thu, 16 May 2013 08:00:58 -0500

“What totally new substance our confirmation instruction would receive if it again became sacramental instruction and the Fourth and Sixth Chief Parts did not just make up a more or less unrelated appendage. And don’t let anyone come up with the excuse that the children are not yet mature enough or that they would misunderstand it. Where that sort of thing is said, it may be assumed that the teacher is not yet mature enough. How one can say these things to children one can learn, with the necessary changes, from the Catholic instruction for First Communion. That is what we can do. The rest God must do: awaken the hunger and thirst for the Sacrament, which is always at the same time a hunger and thirst for the Word of God.”

- Herman Sasse - Letters to Lutheran Pastors - Volume 1

"Here we can learn from the liturgical movement of our time. On this point they are clearly right...."

Wed, 15 May 2013 08:00:59 -0500

“Here we can learn from the liturgical movement of our time. On this point they are clearly right. Our people should know the meaning of the Gloria, the Preface, the Sanctus, the Benedictus and Hosanna, the Consecration as it is expounded in the Formula of Concord, the Agnus Dei, and the Communion. We can explain it to them in special lectures, but we can also do it in sermon and Bible class.”

- Herman Sasse - Letters to Lutheran Pastors - Volume 1

"Our first task is to celebrate the Sacrament of the Altar again and again quite seriously but also..."

Tue, 14 May 2013 08:01:10 -0500

“Our first task is to celebrate the Sacrament of the Altar again and again quite seriously but also with the blessed joy of the first Christians (Acts 2:47). Moreover, we Lutherans have the great freedom that exists, as was already mentioned, in the celebration of the Roman Mass. It can take place in utter simplicity but also with the full splendor of the ancient liturgy of the Lord’s Supper, which Luther preserved and the Lutheran Church kept for two centuries with such great love as a priceless treasure.”

- Herman Sasse - Letters to Lutheran Pastors - Volume 1

"Against the foolish objection that already before the Communion we receive forgiveness in the..."

Mon, 13 May 2013 08:01:24 -0500

“Against the foolish objection that already before the Communion we receive forgiveness in the absolution Luther has already said what is necessary. We cannot receive forgiveness often enough and should receive it in all kinds of ways, for we remain sinners until we die, even though in faith we are righteous.”

- Herman Sasse - Letters to Lutheran Pastors - Volume 1

"The church of the sola Scriptura can never forget that the Lord’s Supper is also a memorial meal...."

Sun, 12 May 2013 08:01:15 -0500

“The church of the sola Scriptura can never forget that the Lord’s Supper is also a memorial meal. “This do in remembrance of Me.” Has any of the great men of world history ever established such a memorial for himself as Jesus in His Supper? Has there ever been a testament as faithfully carried out as this one? “For the forgiveness of sins”? Has a church ever more faithfully preserved this than the church of the sola fide? According to Roman doctrine no one may receive Communion who is in a state of mortal sin, for with such a person, as Thomas (S. th. 3. 79. 3) explains, Christ cannot unite. Lutheran doctrine believes that Jesus comes only to such people, for He is the Savior of sinners.”

- Herman Sasse - Letters to Lutheran Pastors - Volume 1

"One can say confidently that in the four centuries since Luther just about every conceivable path..."

Sat, 11 May 2013 08:01:03 -0500

“One can say confidently that in the four centuries since Luther just about every conceivable path has been followed to get around the literal sense. At the end of this path of so much toil and trouble, of so much expenditure of powers of discernment and learning, modern exegesis must capitulate before the plain wording. “The text stands there too powerfully.” “The path of the spirit is the detour,” said Hegel [1770–1831]. From the detour of historical, psychological, and philosophical researches, discoveries, mistakes, and wrong tracks of so many centuries,\ theology returns, insofar as it is genuine theology, to the paradoxical doctrine of the presence of the true body and blood of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, to the real presence.”

- Herman Sasse - Letters to Lutheran Pastors - Volume 1

"All we have are the Words of Institution as they have been transmitted in the New Testament in Greek..."

Fri, 10 May 2013 08:01:23 -0500

“All we have are the Words of Institution as they have been transmitted in the New Testament in Greek translation in differing forms but with a consistent meaning. Jesus really meant what He said: that the bread that He gave to His disciples was His body. He really meant what He said: that the wine that He gave them in the cup was His blood. It cannot have been a parable, or He would have given an explanation or introduced it as a parable. In reality, He would have proposed a riddle for them instead of a parable, which no one has solved to this day. Even the appeal to the Pauline figure of speech of the “partaking of the body” and to the cup as a testament does not help us over the fact that Paul, as well as John, knows of an eating of the body (or flesh) and of a drinking of the blood. One also cannot give a new interpretation to “body,” for the Johannine “flesh” shows what is meant. One cannot spiritualize “body” and “flesh.” The “blood” stands there too. One cannot say that “flesh and blood” or “body and blood” together mean “person,” for in the institution body and blood did not even appear in the same sentence. They appear in two sentences that were spoken at the beginning and at the end (“after supper”) of the meal, separated by at least an hour.”

- Herman Sasse - Letters to Lutheran Pastors - Volume 1

"The great art of exegesis consists in weighing all the questions of historical research and thinking..."

Thu, 09 May 2013 08:01:03 -0500

“The great art of exegesis consists in weighing all the questions of historical research and thinking them through, making use of all the findings of history, and then saying to the historian where the boundary of his knowledge lies. Every historian is in danger of wanting to understand the people with whom he is dealing psychologically, to enter into their situation internally and externally, and from there to interpret their words. It is one of the basic realizations of recent theology that this procedure is not possible with the person of Jesus, and that is because our sources are not sufficient. The theologian will see in the extraordinary reserve of the evangelists, which makes a biography of Jesus and a description of His soul impossible, the indication that we cannot understand the God-man psychologically. None of us can experience what went on in the soul of Jesus in the hour of the Last Supper. Thus all efforts to experience psychologically and to describe what Jesus must have been thinking at that time and how His words must therefore be explained are frustrated. That explains the diversity of the explanations, which Luther already criticized in those who felt they had to go behind the plain literal sense.”

- Herman Sasse - Letters to Lutheran Pastors - Volume 1

"On the one hand, he saw the disagreement of all his opponents and their inability to offer a..."

Wed, 08 May 2013 08:01:11 -0500

“

On the one hand, he saw the disagreement of all his opponents and their inability to offer a credible, cohesive interpretation of the Words of Institution. On the other, [Luther] saw the Word that no exegesis could shake: “This is My body.” Consequently, you can boldly address Christ both in the hour of death and at the Last Judgment: “My dear Lord Jesus Christ, a controversy has arisen over thy words in the Supper. Some want them to be understood differently from their natural sense. But since they teach me nothing certain, but only lead me into confusion and uncertainty … I have remained with thy text as the words read. If there is anything obscure in them, it is because thou didst wish to leave it obscure, for thou hast given no other explanation of them, nor hast thou commanded any to be given… . “If there should be anything obscure about these words, thou wilt bear with me if I do not completely understand them, just as thou didst forbear with thine apostles when they did not understand thee in many things—for instance, when thou didst announce thy passion and resurrection. And yet they kept thy words just as they were spoken and did not alter them. Thy beloved mother also did not understand when thou saidst to her, Luke 2 [:49], ‘I must be about my Father’s business,’ yet with simplicity she kept these words in her heart and did not alter them. So have I also kept to these thy words.” … Behold, no fanatic will dare to speak thus with Christ, as I know full well, for they are uncertain and at odds over their text [AE 37:305–6 (WA 26:446f.)].

That is genuine theology that speaks when God’s Word speaks and is silent when God’s Word is silent.

”

- Herman Sasse - Letters to Lutheran Pastors - Volume 1

"However, it was not some kind of practical or theoretical considerations that led Luther to his..."

Tue, 07 May 2013 08:00:58 -0500

“However, it was not some kind of practical or theoretical considerations that led Luther to his doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, but the Word of Scripture entirely alone.”

- Herman Sasse - Letters to Lutheran Pastors - Volume 1

"[Luther] also withstood the final and most difficult temptation to sacrifice the complete..."

Mon, 06 May 2013 08:01:08 -0500

“[Luther] also withstood the final and most difficult temptation to sacrifice the complete irrationality of the miracle of the Lord’s Supper for Zwingli’s humanistic-rationalistic objection: Deus non proponit nobis incomprehensibilia [“God does not put incomprehensible statements before us”]. On the contrary, thought Luther, all the great truths of the Christian faith are incomprehensibilia! He here rightly recognized that the rationalizing of the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper brings with it the rationalizing of the whole dogma of the church.”

- Herman Sasse - Letters to Lutheran Pastors - Volume 1

"Luther also clearly recognized the danger that threatens every theologian, that he might follow not..."

Sun, 05 May 2013 08:01:08 -0500

“Luther also clearly recognized the danger that threatens every theologian, that he might follow not only Scripture as the norma normans but also some philosophy, whether it be Aristotelian-Thomistic, which seeks to explain the miracle of the Lord’s Supper with the philosophical miracle of transubstantiation, or the Platonic-Neoplatonic theory of image and sign, which since the days of Augustine was the great danger for the church and which was revived by Zwingli and Calvin, each in his own way. He also faced the temptation, which captured Zwingli, to understand the Words of Institution figuratively, the est in the sense of significat. He knew that there could be no stronger weapon against the Roman Church than if one could prove that the Words of Institution must be understood in this sense. However, he withstood this philosophical temptation, which also had implications for church politics: “The text is too powerfully present” [AE 40:68 (WA 15:394)].”

- Herman Sasse - Letters to Lutheran Pastors - Volume 1

"In contrast to Calvin, who saw in the doctrine of transubstantiation the real cause for the decline..."

Sat, 04 May 2013 08:01:10 -0500

“In contrast to Calvin, who saw in the doctrine of transubstantiation the real cause for the decline of the biblical Lord’s Supper and the root of all corruption (which is historically untenable, since the doctrine of transubstantiation is over a millennium younger than the doctrine of the sacrifice of the Mass), Luther judged this teaching relatively mildly. For him it was a philosophical aberration of theology, a “clever sophistry,” which does not agree with the statements of Scripture, in which the consecrated bread is still called bread (SA III VI; cf. 1 Cor. 10:16; 11:28).”

- Herman Sasse - Letters to Lutheran Pastors - Volume 1

"All traditionalistic theologians of our time, even those who regard themselves as good Lutherans,..."

Fri, 03 May 2013 08:00:59 -0500

“All traditionalistic theologians of our time, even those who regard themselves as good Lutherans, try to revive the sacrifice of the Mass in some way. In this matter Luther was unrelenting. With the theological penetration that was uniquely his, he perceived that any concession at this point would mean a surrender both of sola Scriptura and of sola gratia, which belong inseparably together.”

- Herman Sasse - Letters to Lutheran Pastors - Volume 1

"The most difficult temptation for [Luther], the basically conservative theologian, was..."

Thu, 02 May 2013 08:01:06 -0500

“The most difficult temptation for [Luther], the basically conservative theologian, was traditionalism. He had held on to the traditional liturgy of the Mass with tenacious allegiance (even the Latin language at first). He had preserved the ancient liturgical forms and thereby saved them for the Lutheran Church. But with the sure sense of feeling of a theologian rooted in Scripture, he had recognized where already in the first century before the canon was completed something foreign from Judaism and paganism broke into the church, something that no apostle had taught: the sacrifice that man offers in the Lord’s Supper.”

- Herman Sasse - Letters to Lutheran Pastors - Volume 1

"All genuine theology must proceed from the principle of speaking where God’s Word speaks and being..."

Wed, 01 May 2013 08:01:01 -0500

“All genuine theology must proceed from the principle of speaking where God’s Word speaks and being silent when God’s Word is silent. For this reason Luther is the greatest teacher of the church for us, because he held unshaken to this principle even when the great temptation came to him, in which even the greatest theologians have always been caught at some point, to let something else hold sway in addition to the Word of God.”

- Herman Sasse - Letters to Lutheran Pastors - Volume 1

"Because they knew what they received there, the people of the old Lutheran Church went to Holy..."

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 08:01:07 -0500

“Because they knew what they received there, the people of the old Lutheran Church went to Holy Communion. Because they know that at the altar they receive the body of Christ, Catholics in our time are going to Communion in ever growing number. Because they no longer know for sure what is received in the Sacrament of the Altar, Protestants, even those who call themselves Lutheran, are going to the Lord’s Table in ever smaller numbers, and all efforts to make the congregations appreciate the German Mass of the Lutheran Reformation again have so far failed, and this is not due merely to technical difficulties. The only exception where there is a growing participation in the Lord’s Supper by Protestants is the custom of concluding church rallies with a common celebration of the Lord’s Supper.”

- Herman Sasse - Letters to Lutheran Pastors - Volume 1