believe with a wholly firm heart that the truth is as he speaks and reveals; so that we do not hold him to be a liar and a juggler, but to be faithful and true.’)3
So these three components are interwoven: (1) The ‘fitness’ of man (negative), the recognition of a lack; (2) the truth of God’s promise, offered in Word and sign; (3) the impossibility, recognized by man, that God could lie, the faith, which is counted by God ‘as a fundamental, sufficient piety for blessedness’,4 the faith which receives the sacrament. The essential one of the three is unquestionably for Luther the second—neither the negative fitness nor the positive effect which are on man’s side, but the divine promise. ‘For where the Word of God who promises is, there is of necessity the faith of the man who accepts. Therefore it is clear that the beginning of our salvation is faith which depends on the Word of God who promises, who comes to us, in his free and undeserved mercy, without any effort of ours, and offers the Word of his promise.… The Word of God is first of all; faith follows it and charity follows faith.’5
But this does not exclude, on the contrary it includes as corollary that the third point (believing God to be true) involves a most direct and immediate claim upon men. And it is upon that claim that Luther in this connexion will enlarge particularly. Not as if faith were again to become a kind of work—a most inward, most refined human act of conscience, penitence, and obedience. Certainly not! ‘Be thy remorse and thy true or false(!) penitence what it will, attend most earnestly to this, that thou go to the sacrament trusting in the Word of Christ our Beloved Lord, which is there repeated. For if thou so goest, thou wilt be illuminated and thy countenance will not fall nor be ashamed. Thou canst not possibly in any way succeed in making the blessed mother of God a liar; and she said (Luke 1:53), the Lord has filled the hungry with good things.…’1 But just this ‘therefore so go’ (in view of the questionable character of even our most sincere wanting and desiring) makes a requirement of men, without which the sacrament, or even God himself can effect ‘nothing at all’. It asserts a claim upon men as certainly as the promise announced in the sacrament is its prerequisite.
There is also another thing (not really a different thing) which must be added. ‘Christ does not say to us, see, there it is, there it lies; but he says, take, it is to be thine. It is therefore not consistent with the nature of the sacrament that we should keep it lying there for we must use it. Now there is no other right use except that thou believest that this body was given for thee and this blood shed for thee. So thou hast it as thou believest.’2 And already before 1520 he wrote: ‘How does it help that thou picturest to thyself and believest that death, sin, hell are overcome in Christ for others, if thou dost not also believe that thy death, thy sin, thy hell are overcome for thee and destroyed and that therefore thou art redeemed? The sacrament indeed would be worth nothing if thou dost not believe the very thing which is there revealed, given and promised to thee.’3 But even a year earlier Luther had thought it necessary to counteract this stress on the second person singular and offer the following assurance: ‘If thou art still weak in faith (and that nullifies all other “preparation”),4 learn that last remedy of the weak and allow thyself to be nourished like an infant in the arms and bosom of mother Church, yes on the bed of the paralytic, that the Lord may at least see their faith when there is none of thine; that thou mayest approach in the faith either of the universal Church or of a believing man known to thee and mayest say boldly to the Lord Jesus, Behold me, Lord Jesus Christ; I grieve that I am so weak that I believe not at all, or so little, in thine inestimable love toward us. Accept me therefore in the faith of thy Church and of this or that man. For however it be with me, it is required, O Lord, that I obey thy Church which orders me to come. In obedience at least I come, if I bring nothing else. Then believe firmly that thou dost not come unworthily. There is no doubt that he will accept obedience given to the Church as to himself. Then it cannot be that the faith of the Church will permit thee to perish any more than the babe who is rightly baptized and saved by the faith of others.’1
This last idea, like that cited on the opus operantis (‘work of doing’)2 was for obvious reasons not offered in this form later. From 1520 on, we find the bluntest antithesis: ‘Thou canst not depend on the faith of another when thou approachest the sacrament. Each one must believe for himself, as each one is also required to fight for himself against sin, Satan and the world.’3 The question remains whether this antithesis is more than dialectic, whether it is wholly dropped or whether here ‘an obvious remnant of the Catholic point of view’4 is still to be found. In 1519 Luther writes: ‘Whether I be worthy or not, I am a member of Christianity.’5 And against the vehement ‘each one for himself’ stands all which he said later of the character of the Lord’s Supper as ‘communion’.6 Not to the individual as such, but to Christianity, to the Church, the properly instituted sacrament was intrusted. This is for Luther axiomatic.7
The requirement of personal faith and the reliance on the faith of the Church are correlatives, not mutually exclusive antitheses. A final undialectic word on true faith is to be found when Luther writes: ‘See to it that thou dost not make for thyself a false faith when thou merely believest that Christ is there given thee and is thine. If thy faith is only a human idea which thou hast set up, remain away from this sacrament. For the faith must be a faith which God creates; thou must know and feel that God has wrought such a faith in thee that thou therefore holdest it to be indubitably true that this sign is given to thee and thou art therefore become so brave that thou thinkest to thyself thou art willing to die for it. And if thou art still wavering and doubting, then kneel down and pray God that he impart to thee grace to escape from thyself and to come to the true, created faith.’8
How deeply in earnest Luther was in this critical interpretation of the concept of sacrament from the standpoint of faith is shown in the practical conclusions which he drew from it (at least in theory). He opposed strongly a general, required, conventional attendance of the Lord’s Supper. ‘A Christian on compulsion is a very cheerful, pleasant guest in the kingdom of heaven; God has a particular pleasure in such and will put him at once below the angels where hell is deepest.’1 The man who does not come ‘from his own conscience and from the hunger of his soul’ Luther earnestly advises to stay away, even with the risk that in future ‘scarcely one will go where now many hundreds go’.2
In addition, after 1523, he develops the proposal of testing the communicants. ‘On this account, it should henceforth be arranged that no one is allowed to go to the sacrament unless he be questioned beforehand and it be ascertained how his heart stands, whether he knows what the sacrament is and why he comes to it’; whether he is ‘such a vessel that he can contain it and whether he knows how to witness to his faith.’ Luther would like to bring it about that ‘in the church service, the true believers could be given a separate place together and so be distinguished from the others. I would gladly have done it long ago, but it would not have been allowed since it has not yet been preached and urged sufficiently.’ There is necessarily a difference between preaching and the distribution of the sacrament. ‘When I preach the Gospel, I do not know who is reached by it; but I ought to be sure that it has reached him who comes to the sacrament. Therefore I must not act at random, but be certain that he to whom I give the sacrament has received the Gospel.’3 And in the Rule of Mass and Communion for the Church of Wittenberg there was actually included a requirement that the communicants had to present themselves once a year to the episcopus. They were to report (1) on their knowledge of the nature and use of the Lord’s Supper; (2) on their purpose in their previous participation in it; but also (3), because Satan could also answer these two questions, on their life and morals (vita et mores) in relation to their faith. According to the result, the episcopus is then to admit them or to keep them back on account of their ignorance or their unrepented unworthiness.4
So strongly critical had the concept of faith become that Luther had almost—become Calvin. That he did not, but remained Luther, must chiefly be explained on other grounds than the merely ‘historical’.
Only believe means receive, have, enjoy what is given in ‘Word and sign’. But
