Martin Luther
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MARTIN LUTHER: THE RELUCTANT REVOLUTIONARY<br />
PROF. M. M. NINAN<br />
Transubstantiation<br />
Eucharist is more than a mere commemoration or symbol. While Catholics believe that the bread<br />
and wine literally becomes the body and blood of Jesus - known as “trans-substantiation”<br />
<strong>Luther</strong>ans also believe in co-substantiation that the bread and wine retain their outward<br />
characteristics, but of the body and blood of Christ are present alongside the substance of the<br />
bread and wine. Later <strong>Luther</strong>ans used the word Sacramental Union, where the Real Presence is<br />
only as a sort of extension of the Incarnation, a precise presence pro nobis, a presence bringing<br />
grace for the forgiveness of sins. Consequently, in the Eucharistic Sacrament, Christ unites his<br />
Body with the bread and wine (doctrine of "consubstantiation"), thereby making his omnipresence<br />
perceptible to us and salvific for us (doctrine of ubiquitarianism).<br />
Therefore, considering the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist from the perspective of his two<br />
natures, <strong>Luther</strong> maintained that after the consecration, the bread and wine retain their own<br />
properties, but united with the Body and Blood of the Lord they constitute a true sacramental unity.<br />
Christ's presence in the Sacrament is an abstraction. The bread and wine becomes for the believer<br />
the body and blood of Jesus.<br />
Thus, <strong>Luther</strong> categorically denied the ontological mutation of the species of the bread and<br />
wine through "transubstantiation".<br />
<strong>Luther</strong>, Calvin and Zwingli totally rejected the sacrificial character of Mass, the Roman<br />
Canon, the so-called "Private Mass" and the application of Masses for the living and the<br />
dead.<br />
Alterations that <strong>Luther</strong> made to the Mass include:<br />
• Its translation in whole or in part into German (although he permitted most of the Mass to<br />
remain in Latin depending on the scruples of a given congregation, he always spoke the<br />
words of institution in German), and<br />
• The removal of the "long prayer of consecration that implied the mass reenacted the<br />
sacrifice of Jesus." (Hendrix 128, 129; elsewhere in the biography Hendrix mentions <strong>Luther</strong>'s<br />
distaste for the canon of the mass, to which he is likely referring with "long prayer" here.<br />
Clearly <strong>Luther</strong> retained the words of institution, albeit in German, but if I were to guess, he<br />
would have at least done away with the preface, the oblation, the epiclesis, and the<br />
intercessions [see anaphora]. Of course, if someone else knows more specifically what was<br />
changed, that would be good to know.)<br />
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