Faith and God's Word

In a section examining Martin Luther's Lectures on Hebrews (April 1517), Thomas J. Davis discusses how Luther began to mature theologically by working "extensively through the concepts of personal faith and the word of testament (the promise) and how the two are related in such a way as to portend his mature beliefs." To that point, Davis observes:

Faith is a clinging to the Word of God for Luther. It is the only work of the Gospel, and it is internal. In a telling passage, Luther declared, "Without faith it is impossible for God to be with us." Why is this so? Because God "does everything through the word." For that Word to bear fruit for the believer, there must be faith. One can ties this arrangement to the incarnation. If Christ is God incarnate, as Luther certainly affirmed, the way one possesses that incarnate Word is through faith. The union of believers with the incarnate Word, a union so real that Luther speaks of Christ as the Christian's substance, is achieved only through faith. If the Sacrament is a visible word, as Augustine of hippo taught and Luther accepted, then the Word itself is an audible body, Christ's substance, possessed through the hearing and believing of it--through faith" (Thomas J. Davis, This is My Body: The Presence of Christ in Reformation Thought, 33).

The Ordinary Means of Grace

"This chapter launches the thesis that will run throughout the rest of the book. That thesis is this: God has promised to save and keep his people through the means he has appointed and through no others; the ordinary means of grace are limited to the preached Word and the administered sacraments; God's rationale for these means is made explicit in Scripture [emphasis original]. There are many other things that are essential for Christian growth: prayer, Bible study, service to others. However, these are not, properly speaking, means of grace but means of discipleship" (Michael Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship, 29).

Nevin: Reformation Thought, Again

Nevin, again, providing an account of the “two great Protestant Confessions” that emerged out of Reformation Germany, the Lutheran “Form of Concord” and the several Calvinistic Confessions, which were “embodied comprehensively in the Heidelberg Catechism.”

Nevin asserts that, "They [the two great Protestant Confessions] form altogether one of the most strange and interesting chapters, in the church history of the sixteenth century.” What is the substance of this interesting chapter in sixteenth century history? Here's the rub:

The great point at issue in the controversy, as it now stood, was the mode simply of Christ’s mystical presence in the holy eucharist. The fact of a real communication with his true mediatorial life, the substance of his body and blood, was acknowledged in general on both sides. The rigid Lutheran party however were not satisfied with this. They insisted on a nearer definition of the manner, in which the mystery must be allowed to hold; and contended for the formula, “In, with, and under” indispensable to a complete expression of Christ’s sacramental presence. He must be so comprehended in the elements, as to be received along with them by the mouth, on the part of all communicants, whether believers or unbelievers. It was for refusing to admit these extreme requisitions only, that the other party was branded with the title Sacramentarian, and held up to malediction in every direction as the pest of society. The heresy of which it was judged to be guilty stood simply in this, that the presence of Christ was held to be, after the theory of Calvin, not “in, with and under” the bread, but only with it; not for the mouth, but only for faith; not in the flesh but only by the Spirit; not for unbelievers therefore, but only for believers. This was the nature of the question,  that now filled all Germany with conflagration. It respected wholly the mode of Christ’s substantial presence in the Lord’s Supper, not the fact of the mystery itself  (J. W. Nevin, History and Genius of the Heidelberg Catechism (Chambersburg, 1847), 29-30).

Nevin: Reformation Thought, Again

“It shows a most poor and superficial way of thinking, to look upon the sacramentarian controversy of the sixteenth century, as something only externally or accidentally related to the proper life of Protestantism – an arbitrary, isolated difficulty, created by the caprice of superstition simply, or mere blind self-will. To the religious consciousness of the time, the question stood intertwined with the entire scheme of the gospel, and was felt to reach out, in its bearings and consequences, to the farthest limits of theology” (J. W. Nevin, History and Genius of the Heidelberg Catechism (Chambersburg, 1847), 11).