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Why Lutherans Dislike the Word Consubstantiation

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Why Lutherans Dislike the Word Consubstantiation

Textbooks routinely label the Lutheran position consubstantiation, and Lutheran theologians routinely object. The objection is not pedantry.

Consubstantiation names a theory: that two substances, the substance of bread and the substance of Christ's body, coexist in the same object. It is a theory of the same kind as transubstantiation and it uses the same Aristotelian apparatus. Luther's whole complaint against transubstantiation was that the church had made a philosophical explanation into an article of faith and anathematised those who declined it. He was not proposing a rival mechanism; he was declining to propose one.

The Lutheran confessional documents accordingly affirm the fact and refuse the explanation. The Formula of Concord of 1577 states that the body and blood are truly and substantially present and are distributed and received with the bread and wine, and calls the union sacramental, distinguishing it from a natural or local presence. The preposition formula, in, with and under, is a way of asserting presence without specifying a spatial or substantial relation. Luther used the analogy of iron heated in a fire, where both iron and fire are present in the same object without either becoming the other.

Two further Lutheran positions follow. The presence is tied to the use, that is, to the action of consecrating, distributing and receiving, which is why Lutherans have not developed eucharistic adoration outside the service as Catholics have. And the presence does not depend on the faith of the recipient: the unworthy receive the body and blood to their own judgement, a doctrine known as the eating by the unworthy, which distinguishes the Lutheran view sharply from the Reformed account in which the believer alone feeds on Christ by the Spirit.

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