Melanchthon wrote, “The views of Erasmus might have caused greater tumults if Luther had not arisen to arrest them . . . all of this tragedy about the Lord’s Supper started from him.” Melanchthon had in mind Erasmus’s Neo-platonic disparagement of matter, which infected Zwingli and filtered into Anabaptist theology.
Roland Bainton summarizes Luther’s response: “The foci for Luther were God, man and the world, not spirit and flesh. These were never separated. God himself is in flesh. The incarnation literally means being in flesh. God is present in all physical reality, and Christ as God is ubiquitous and does not need to be made present in the elements of the Lord’s Supper by any miracle. The minister serves not to put Christ into the bread but only to disclose his presence. Spirit and flesh are not separated in man. Both of them together constitute in him a whole, and this is why the physical may be employed as a means of communication with the divine. Music, images, and the elements of the sacraments all have their place. Especially, the Word of God does not dispense with the external, nor communicate itself directly, but only through the Scriptures and the sacraments.”
The Reformation saved the flesh.
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…
