LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Brock University

82 LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW IX
never became a part of the Barth/ecumenical world as a result of his
Lutheran convictions about the Sacrament of the Altar. He remained the odd
man out. He understood that apart from the Sacrament, the Church would be
simply swallowed up by the world. In the Sacrament of the Altar the Church
is uniquely manifested as what she is divinely intended to be. During the
war years and in post-World War II Germany, Sasse continued to call the
Lutheran Church to a eucharistic practice that once had been and might once
again be. He stated, “The proclamation of this ‘eternal Gospel’ is always to
be accompanied by the celebration of the Sacrament that our Lord instituted
by which His death is proclaimed until he comes.” It was Sasse’s insight,
paraphrasing Luther, that there was no Gospel without the Real Presence. It
is the Blessed Sacrament that prevents Jesus being locked up in the past and
His atonement from turning into abstract theory. Sasse was convinced that
the restoration of the Blessed Sacrament to its proper place in the Divine
Service dare not be an interest only of liturgical reform. It is a matter of life
and death for the Lutheran Church, in his view. As Dr Stephenson
comments on Sasse’s teaching on the Sacrament, “Can we do without the
rite once instituted in the upper room, which bridges the gap between the
yesterday of the earthly Jesus and the tomorrow of our Lord’s glorious
return” The answer seems obvious.
Consubstantiation is the non-Lutheran word taken up by Dr Norman
Nagel in the final major chapter (240-59). Professor Nagel indicates that the
word never existed until the 16 th century, and although ascribed to Lutherans
as their teaching on the Sacrament of Altar, it is disavowed. What Lutherans
confess is that the Sacrament is the “true body and blood of our Lord Jesus
Christ under bread and wine, instituted by Christ Himself for us Christians
to eat and to drink.” The term “consubstantiation” is traced to the Reformed
theologian Hospinian in 1598. From that point Professor Nagel proceeds to
trace the use of the word to the Harper Collins Encyclopedia of Catholicism
of 1995. However, Dr Nagel’s purpose is to do more than simply trace the
use of the term. It is rather to expound the doctrine of the Sacrament of the
Altar from Sasse’s understanding and writings. Nagel proceeds through the
Scriptural evidence, the Confessional writings, and the writings of the
fathers to the orthodox Lutheran teachers. Nagel calls us to adoration.
“Before His body and blood, before Him whose body and blood they are, we
kneel, we worship, we worship ‘with one adoration’.”
The concluding chapter is an appreciation of Hermann Sasse, the man
and the theologian, by Dr Edwin Lehman, President of Lutheran Church–
Canada at the time of the symposium (260-68). He suggests that part of
Sasse’s legacy is that we are called to think theologically, to have a sense of
history and the whole church, be ready to confess, and have a pastoral heart.
Dr Lehman concludes by quoting Sasse, “When does the church exert its