LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Brock University

78 LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW IX
be admired for his exemplary courage in speaking out against National
Socialism, even at peril of his own life.
Dr John W. Kleinig takes a different direction as he discusses Sasse on
worship (106-22). As Professor Kleinig points out, Sasse was not a liturgical
scholar. He never taught liturgy. He served on no liturgical commissions. He
prepared no liturgies for use in the church. Yet Sasse’s theology flowed
from a deep understanding and appreciation of the liturgical life of the
church. Kleinig terms Sasse a “liturgical theologian”. On what basis is that
designation made During his lifetime, Sasse wrote three books and eight
major essays on liturgical theology. Perhaps his understanding and
appreciation of the liturgical and sacramental life of the church culminated
in his masterpiece, This is My Body, published in 1959. This was followed
twenty years later by Corpus Christi, his final liturgical work. Sasse
understood that the real presence of our Lord in the Sacrament of the Altar
was the heart of the liturgy. While Sasse acknowledged that the church has
had and used many different services, he held that the Sacrament of the
Altar was the chief Divine Service. Without the Sacrament, every other act
of worship was partial and incomplete. All other services gained their
significance from the connection with the Lord’s Supper. If the Lord’s
Supper was the central Divine Service, then it was the real presence of our
Lord in the Sacrament that is the heart of the entire service. Sasse
understood and believed that the Sacrament of the Altar presented the risen
Lord Jesus in His humanity and divinity entirely to the congregation. Sasse
believed that there was an essential connection between the preaching of
God’s Word and the celebration of the Sacrament of the Altar in the liturgy.
Both illuminated and empowered each other. If either was divorced from the
other, both were distorted. Both the preaching and the celebration were to be
rightly connected that the Gospel might be communicated to the faithful. Dr
Kleinig suggests that Sasse, like Luther, was a liturgical conservative whom
many believed to be out of touch with the times. While he repeatedly argued
for freedom from all kinds of liturgical legalism, he had no time for
liturgical experimentation. He maintained that the oldest liturgies were the
best ones and that the greatest freedom for the individual Christian lay in the
use of the old forms. The old liturgies were objective and expressed what all
Christians had in common. Therefore, they were capacious and inclusive.
Perhaps Sasse’s view of the liturgy can best be summarised in his own
words: “the liturgy is an anticipation of the eternal worship which goes on in
heaven.”
Catholic and apostolic were two words that were common to the
theological vocabulary of Hermann Sasse. Dr Thomas M. Winger takes up
the task of looking at Sasse’s theology from the vantage-point of these two
key words (123-54). Sasse sought to understand and teach the doctrine of
the church as a catholic expression. Modem Protestantism, rooted in