Luther vs. Pope Leo by Hinlicky Paul R.;

Author:Hinlicky, Paul R.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abingdon Press
Published: 2015-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

EUCHARIST AND SACRIFICE

BACKSTORY

As rapidly as the controversy over indulgences was eclipsed by the question of authority in the church, and as quickly as defense of the merchandizing of indulgences collapsed before Luther’s withering critique, a new target came into focus in his polemic against “papist” trafficking in sacred things. He called this new target “the sacrifice of the mass,” meaning the ritual practice of a spiritual or “unbloody” sacrifice on the altar at a time when people received communion rarely and viewing the elevated host, or adoration of the reserved host, was seen [as] a powerful form of contact with Christ as a sort of substitute for receiving Communion.1 In this development, it can hardly be denied (also on the Catholic side in the reforms of Vatican II) that the mass had become a spectacle to be observed rather than a meal to be shared and just so a koinonia in the body and blood of Christ, the risen One who had been crucified. That latter would indicate that at its heart the Christian assembly is a communion and that the assembly of these assemblies is a communion of communions—an alternative theology of the visible unity of the universal church amidst the plurality of local churches. Be that as it may, what was even worse, for Luther, was that in the process of making the Eucharist a spectacle rather than a communion, the precious and unmerited gift of God in the communion was turned into a meritorious offering to God.

Yet this critique by Luther was not quite fair or even consequent with his own theological understanding of the gift of God that consisted in Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. The idea in the sacrifice of the mass was that of the divinely provided Lamb of God (cf. Genesis 22:8). As the bread and wine are miraculously turned by God into the body and blood of Christ, they are given by God to be offered back to God as a proper propitiation for, or satisfaction of, divine anger on the poor sinners who assembled to witness the spiritual sacrifice. God thus graciously provides the means of atonement in the sacrifice of the mass. Sorting out just how Luther disagrees with this way of understanding God’s gift as God’s sacrifice is a matter of some subtlety, especially when Catholic theologians clarify that the sacrifice of the mass is a re-presentation of once-and-for-all Calvary, not, as alleged, a repetition of it. As a re-presentation, it does just what Luther required: it proclaims the Lord’s death for us until He comes again. It does not amplify or supplement with meritorious human performance the once-for-all sacrifice of the Lamb of God, which as such is all-sufficing for human salvation.

All the same, this belief, as Luther understood it, that the “mass is a good work and a sacrifice,” he railed, “has brought an endless host of other abuses in its train, so that the faith of this sacrament has become utterly extinct and the holy sacrament has been turned into mere merchandise, a market, and a profit-making business.

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