The Sacramentarian Error and Its Pastoral Cost

The Sacramentarians, principally Zwingli and Calvin, taught that Christ ascended and His body is now strictly enclosed in a specific local place in heaven. The Supper, on their account, is a symbolic memorial that helps the believer's faith ascend above all heavens to seek Christ there. The Formula of Concord quotes their explicit statement: the true essential body and blood of Christ is as far absent from the consecrated bread and wine as the highest heaven is from the earth. The Supper, under this account, is a feast where the Bridegroom is absent and the guests honor His memory. SD VII's refusal to surrender the Real Presence was driven entirely by pastoral stakes. If the Supper is a symbolic memorial, its comfort depends on the strength of the communicant's faith ascending to heaven. A believer with a weak, doubting, or terrified conscience would have no solid ground under her feet, because the ground is her own faith's performance. SD VII places the ground entirely outside her. The body and blood are given as a certain pledge and assurance that sins are surely forgiven, and this pledge rests on the almighty power, word, and institution of Christ, not on the worthiness of the pastor or the spiritual readiness of the communicant. Psalm 118's rejoicing on the day the Lord has made is not contingent on the quality of the worshiper's emotional state; the day the Lord has made is objective.

The Sacramentarians taught that the Supper's effectiveness depends on the communicant's faith ascending to heaven to find Christ there. SD VII says the presence rests entirely on Christ's Word, not on the communicant's spiritual performance. A person with weak or terrified faith has more need of the pledge, not less. How does a pastor preach the Supper to a congregation in a way that makes this objective ground felt, so that the doubting communicant approaches the rail with confidence rather than with the anxiety that her faith may not be strong enough?
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The Words of Institution Taken Plainly

The Formula's hermeneutical ground for the Real Presence is its insistence on reading Christ's words of institution in their simple, plain, clear, and literal sense. "This is my body." SD VII rejects every attempt to figurize, spiritualize, or metaphorize these words into something less than what they say. When Christ says this is, the Confessors hear identity, not symbol. When He says my body, they hear the same body born of Mary, crucified, risen, and ascended. When He says given for you, they hear the personal application of His passion to each communicant individually. The for you is the Formula's pastoral center. The Real Presence is not a metaphysical curiosity; it is the mechanism by which Christ's death is given personally to the sinner who receives the bread. Revelation 19's blessed are those invited to the marriage supper is not a general statement about those who hold the right theological position; it is the declaration of blessing over those who receive the Bridegroom who comes. Psalm 118's "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord" is the congregation's acclamation of the One who arrives at every celebration to give what His death purchased, placed personally and specifically in the hands of each communicant.

SD VII takes the words of institution in their simple, plain, clear, and literal sense against every attempt to figurize them, and argues that the for you is their pastoral center. The Real Presence is the mechanism by which the cross is given personally to the communicant. How does recovering the literal reading of the words of institution change the way a pastor explains the Supper to a catechumen, and what is lost when those words are treated as symbolic language for a spiritual experience the communicant generates?
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Oral Eating, the Unworthy, and Supernatural Mystery

SD VII's defense of the oral eating of both the worthy and the unworthy is the doctrine's logical consequence and its most controversial implication. There is a spiritual eating, which is faith receiving Christ and His benefits; this is necessary for salvation. But there is also a sacramental or oral eating, where the true, essential body and blood are partaken of with the mouth. The Formula insists that not only godly believers but also unworthy, godless hypocrites such as Judas and his ilk receive the true body and blood, to their judgment and condemnation, because they sin against and dishonor what the Lord's Word has placed in the bread. The pastoral implication runs both directions. Negatively, human unbelief cannot unmake the miracle that Christ's Word creates. The Supper's reality does not depend on the communicant's faith; it is established by Christ's command. Positively, the believer who approaches the rail with weak faith is not receiving less than the believer who approaches with strong faith; both receive the same body and blood, and the difference is entirely in what they do with the pledge they receive. The Formula guards this objective reality with one further qualification: the presence is not Capernaitic, not physical in a gross earthly sense of flesh torn with teeth, but supernatural, heavenly, and incomprehensible, surpassing human reason and explanation, believed simply because Christ who is Truth has promised it.

SD VII's manducatio indignorum shows that human unbelief cannot unmake what Christ's Word creates, and the Formula's rejection of Capernaitic eating shows that the presence is supernatural and incomprehensible, not reducible to a physical or mechanical process. How does a congregation hold both truths simultaneously: that the presence is real enough to condemn the unworthy, and mysterious enough to surpass all explanation?