Outer Rim Territories

Luther on the Sacrament of the Altar

I'm reading the "the Babylonian Captivity of the Church" by Martin Luther for Church History III class. It's a good read and actually a decent translation. Some of these Latin/German translations read like a stereo manual. He's pointed and not exceedingly deliberate with his words. It's a great text for discussion of sacraments, especially in light of 16th century Roman catholicism. In regards to transubstantiation (and other use of reason in trying to dissect an understanding of Holy Communion), Dr. Luther has this to say:

Let us not dabble too much in philosophy, however. Does not Christ appear to have anticipated this curiosity admirably by saying of the wine, not Hoc est sanguis meus, but Hic est sanguis meus? [Mark 14:24]. He speaks even more clearly when he brings in the word cup and says: This cup [Hic calix] is the new testament in my blood [Luke 22:20; I Cor. 11:25]. Does it not seem as though he desired to keep us in a simple faith, sufficient for us to believe that his blood was in the cup? For my part, if I cannot fathom how the bread is the body of Christ, yet I will take my reason captive to the obedience of Christ [II Cor. 10:5], and clinging simply to his words, firmly believe not only that the body of Christ is in the bread, but that the bread is the body of Christ. My warrant for this is the words which say: He took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "Take, eat, this (that is, this bread, which he had taken and broken) is my body" [I Cor. 11:23-24]. And Paul says: The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? [I Cor. 10:16]. He does not say in the bread there is, but the bread itself is the participation in the body of Christ. What does it matter if philosophy cannot fathom this? The Holy Spirit is greater than Aristotle. Does philosophy fathom their transubstantiation? Why, they themselves admit that here all philosophy breaks down. That the pronoun this, in both Greek and Latin, is referred to body, is due to the fact that in both of these languages the two words are of the same gender. In Hebrew, however, which has no neuter gender, this is referred to bread, so that it would be proper to say Hic [bread] est corpus meum. Actually, the idiom of the language (ed. Luther assumes Christ spoke Hebrew or Aramaic and not Greek) and common sense both prove that the subject [this] obviously points to the bread and not to the body, when he says: Hoc est corpus meum, dos ist meyn leyp, that is, This very bread here [iste panis] is my body. Luther, Martin. Vol. 36, Luther's Works, Vol. 36 : Word and Sacrament II. Edited by Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald and Helmut T. Lehmann. Luther's Works. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1999, c1959.