Paul McCain has responded to Gene Bridges’ post:
***QUOTE***
I found the quote that follows these remarks to be a helpful insight into Calvinist thinking on the Lord's Supper. My quick response to their "how" question about our Lord's human nature is simply this...how was it possible for the Risen Lord to suddenly "appear in the midst of them" among His disciples on Easter? What was His human nature doing after the Resurrection? Was it omnipresent with Him? Or was Jesus hiding out until the Ascension? How did His human nature ascend? Or what about the Transfiguration? It seems that was a pretty amazing event for His human nature, a foretaste of what was to come during His glorification? How is God able to create everything out of nothing? How is a Virgin able to conceive? How is that some are saved, and not others? So man "how" questions! Finally, how is it that Christ fills all things, and yet, not, apparently, according to the Calvinists with also His human nature, which is forever joined to the divine nature, see Eph. 4.
A desire to provide a "logical" explanation to these "how" questions is really Calvinism's downfall. Again, you notice how the "system" is all important for Calvinism. Whatever doesn't square with it is out. There is a reason old John Calvin said, "The finite is incapable of the infinite" and by saying that he thereby effectively, if they are going to be consistent, excludes the Incarnation to begin with!
http://cyberbrethren.typepad.com/
***END-QUOTE***
Gene is quite able to speak for himself, but while he is otherwise occupied, I’ll play pitch-hitter. McCain levels the familiar charge that Calvinism is guilty of rationalism. By way of reply:
i) I agree with McCain that it’s improper to invoke an abstract axiom like “finitum non est capax infiniti” to oppose the real presence. That particular part of the traditional Reformed polemic should be put out to pasture.
ii) Having said that, Gene did not invoke such a principle. Gene did not reason from Reformed assumptions or the logic of the Reformed belief-system. Gene did not appeal to abstract logical consistency or extraneous standards of reference. There was nothing aprioristic in Gene’s critique.
iii) Rather, Gene was discussing the Lutheran doctrine on its own grounds. Gene was examining the internal logic of the Lutheran belief-system.
iv) In addition, Gene also discussed the Scriptural usage of terms.
v) As I’ve pointed out to McCain, in answer to his question, Calvinism doesn’t have a systemic view of the sacraments. One’s position on the sacraments is not a Reformed distinctive. The distinctives of Calvinism do not implicate any particular view of the sacraments. Reformed theological method doesn’t implicate any particular view of the sacraments.
vi) Lutheran theology would be more consistent if it merely quoted 1 Cor 11:24 and left it at that. But Lutheran theology doesn’t leave it there. As Gene pointed out, Lutheran theology makes two further moves:
a) It tries to explain the real presence by appeal to its peculiar construction of the hypostatic union.
b) It tries to explain the real presence by appeal to “an illocal, supernatural mode of presence.”
By making these moves, Lutheran theology attempts to rationalize the doctrine of the real presence.
vii) Moreover, by glossing the copulative (“is”) as meaning “an illocal, supernatural mode of presence,” Lutheranism departs from the literal sense of 1 Cor 11:24. By insisting on the ubiquity of Christ’s humanity, Lutheranism departs from the literal sense of physicality and corporality.
viii) Speaking for myself, there’s another problem. Even if, for the sake of argument, we affirm the ontological communication of attributes, that would not underwrite the ubiquity of our Lord’s humanity.
Divine “omnipresence” is picture language. It’s a divine metaphor for the literal attributes of omniscience and omnipotence. God’s knowledge and power isn’t bounded by space and time because God subsists outside of space and time. Distance is not barrier to divine action.
The Lutheran definition of ubiquity is implicitly pantheistic, as if God literally filled physical space, like ether. But God is not some extended substance. God is not composed of subtle matter. God is not infinite in that concrete sense of the word. Contrary to process theology, the universe is not God’s body.
>There is a reason old John Calvin said
ReplyDeleteCalvin died moderately young.
On another point: my impression of Calvin when I first came to read and study his biblical teaching is he did the actual opposite of what he is being accused of here regarding being logical at the expense of biblical meaning or being procrustean in fitting things into a supposed logical system. Calvinism just says what the Bible says. And where the Bible is intentionally not forthcoming, or where mystery exists, or where something meets a misty edge or ceiling calling for a believer to allow themselves to be left in a state of not being able to know but having faith then Calvin recognized that. He was fond of quoting Deuteronomy 29:29.
K7, quick response: "old" was used here not as decriptive, but along the lines of "good, old Calvin" but I choose not to describe him as "good" -- people who arrange for the execution of their theological opponents don't strike me as "good."
ReplyDeleteSteve....you posted some interesting thoughts, but might you take a stab at responding to the questions I asked in my blog post? I would like to know how you think Calvinism deals with the post-Resurrection appearances of Jesus and His human nature.
And when you dismiss the "infinite not capable of the finite" charge so blithely, are you in fact saying that John Calvin and his followers never said such a thing or made such an assertion?
I'm going to guess here that all you've ever read about Calvin was written by atheists or Roman Catholics.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, Reformed types don't get into the cult of personality...like others. We're all about sola Scriptura.
For Calvin's part I'm sure he'd be the first to tell you he was not good, as you put it.
Be careful, also, of the charge of killing people. It's a double and triple edged sword. What we really have to do is get into numbers, and Roman Catholics/Lutherans weren't the one's being tied to stakes.
Oh, now, K7, come now. You seriously all I've read about Calvin was written by atheists and RCs? Nope, sorry. Not so. I've read biographies of Calvin by sympathetic folk, Calvinists even! Gasp.
ReplyDeleteMy point is that Calvin was directly responsible for the execution of a person in his little theocracy in Geneva. That's a Calvinist thing, not a Lutheran thing to do. Luther eschewed the execution of heretics, and if you try to toss up his comments in the Peasant War, bear in mind the issue was one of civil disobedience and rebellion, not false teaching.
Michael Servetus was executed at the express wishes and with the blessing of Calvin. He was executed not for crimes against the people but for his doctrinal views: anti-Trinitaranism and anti-infant baptism.
ReplyDeleteLet it be noted that the Calvinists of Geneva put half-green wood around the feet of Michael Servetus and a wreath strewn with sulfur on his head.
It took over thirty minutes to render him lifeless in such a fire, while the people of Geneva stood around to watch him suffer and slowly die! Just before this happened, the record shows:
"Farel walked beside the condemned man, and kept up a constant barrage of words, in complete insensitivity to what Servetus might be feeling. All he had in mind was to extort from the prisoner an acknowledgement [sic] of his theological error -- a shocking example of the soulless cure of souls. After some minutes of this, Servetus ceased making any reply and prayed quietly to himself. When they arrived at the place of execution, Farel announced to the watching crowd: 'Here you see what power Satan possesses when he has a man in his power. This man is a scholar of distinction, and he perhaps believed he was acting rightly. But now Satan possesses him completely, as he might possess you, should you fall into his traps.'
When the executioner began his work, Servetus whispered with trembling voice: 'Oh God, Oh God!' The thwarted Farel snapped at him: 'Have you nothing else to say?' This time Servetus replied to him: 'What else might I do, but speak of God!' Thereupon he was lifted onto the pyre and chained to the stake. A wreath strewn with sulfur was placed on his head. When the faggots were ignited, a piercing cry of horror broke from him. 'Mercy, mercy!' he cried. For more than half an hour the horrible agony continued, for the pyre had been made of half-green wood, which burned slowly. 'Jesus, Son of the eternal God, have mercy on me,' the tormented man cried from the midst of the flames ...."
You say you've read about Calvin from objective sources then you immediately write two of the most juvenile and ignorant posts regarding Servetus that one can find anywhere in atheist and RC environments on the internet.
ReplyDelete1. Servetus was the only individual put to death for religious opinions in Calvin's lifetime.
2. Servetus' trial, conviction and execution and the choice of burning at the stake) were carried out by the City Council of Geneva at a time when the concil was hostile to Calvin (which Calvin wasn't even in power).
3. Calvin lobbied for a different kind of execution and was denied by the council.
4. Calvin councelled Servetus in his prison cell trying to get him to recant, to no avail.
5. Servetus was something of a freak with a long-running death wish (and a boat load of heretical doctrine in a time when heresy was seen similarly as treason is seen in our day during time of war; and when heresy risked the lives of entire populations, i.e. if Geneva were seen to be lenient on such heresy it gave, in the political relams of the Reformation battles, an advantage to the the enemies of those who were fighting for the light, and to demand Geneva, who as stated, executed ONE individual for heresy be held to a higher standard than Lutherans and Roman Catholics and every other side and faction in the general wars of the time shows a desire to achieve something motivated by something other than humanitarian concern) and Servetus had a decades-long obsession with Calvin that suggests demonic influence.
6. If you have bad-will against Calvin you will eat up all the propaganda and spew it back forth no matter what.
7. If you think as a 'modern' you are 'better' than people in the 16th century because you can recognize the cruely of such modes of captial punishment then you should re-acquaint yourself with the doctrine of sin as the Bible teaches it, and then also read the historian William H. Prescott in his History of the Conquest of Mexico where he discourses on this subject in the context of the cruelty of the conquistadors and the times back then in general and puts into wise perspective in a striking way why you shouldn't be too self-righteous about such matters.
By the standards of the time Calvin and Geneva were an oasis of sanity and compassion.
You remind me of the leftists of the 20th century who imprisoned, tortured, and murdered 100,000,000 then screamed that the U.S. was evil for killing 300 Marxist guerillas in Central America.
Frankly I could use stronger language to describe you, but I'll refrain.
While there's a sense in which McCain provoked this particular outburst by bringing up the old canard of Sevetus, to compare him to the Sandinistas is both absurd and way over the line. Commenters need to restrain themselves--otherwise they'll be deleted.
ReplyDeletePaul, I don't deny that Calvin used the "finitum" formula. Here I part company with Calvin. I'm happy to cede that point to the Lutherans.
ReplyDeleteSandinistas?
ReplyDeletek7,
ReplyDeleteI think your answer demonstrated my point.
You write:
1. Servetus was the only individual put to death for religious opinions in Calvin's lifetime.
>>>Oh, since it was only one person, then, that's not so bad after all?
3. Calvin lobbied for a different kind of execution and was denied by the council.
>>>Thank you for proving my point that Calvin was in favor and actively involved in the question of the execution of a man because of his religious beliefs, something that Luther never advocated.
4. Calvin councelled Servetus in his prison cell trying to get him to recant, to no avail.
>>>And so then he conceded to his execution on the grounds of religious beliefs.
Paul, Mr. Hays used the word canard. Maybe at this point you should just look up the word canard.
ReplyDeleteChallies has a good post on the Servetus issue.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.challies.com/archives/001318.php
Mark
Oh honestly Rev. McCain. I hope you don't refer to Luther as "good" considering his excessive vitriol against the Jews—for their religious beliefs, no less!
ReplyDeleteMelanchthon, by the way, approved of Servetus' execution.
>>>And so then he conceded to his execution on the grounds of religious beliefs.
ReplyDeleteA This was a perfectly legal death in that day. In Israel, heresy/apostasy was punishable by death, so it's not as if there is not a precedent for this, for you have God commanding apostates within Israel to die and whole nations destroyed for following after other gods.
B. The civil authorities executed him. The death was legal under the laws of that time. Are you suggesting Calvin should have exceeded the bounds of Romans 13 and the believer's relationship to the civil law? He could have done nothing after the verdict, like, well everybody else. Instead, he asked for a merciful death. Would you have preferred he let Servetus go, a decision ultimately undermining the Protestant states themselves by making them look soft on heresy, ultimately undermining the Reformation itself?
C. Are you so obtuse not to make the connection? In Magisterial Europe to subvert the church, whatever church that may be, through heresy was also civil disobedience and rebellion.
Tolerance is modern phenomenon.
So, on the one hand you excuse Luther on the Peasant War on the basis that it was about rebellion and civil disobedience, but you deny that heresy can be considered civil disobedience and rebellion, when, under the standards of the time, that wasn't the case. All you're doing is imputing your values now to then and castigating them for not measuring up. This is known as mirror-reading, and just another of your emotion-laden jeremiads.
Here's the problem. If Calvin had let Servetus go without informing the civil authorities, it would have weakened the Reformed churches by making them look weak on heresy. Rome had already condemned him to die. Had Servetus not faced trial and execution, then all the Protestant churches, including those of the Lutherans, would have looked weak on heresy. In that society, where church and state were united, this undermines both church and state, that is, itself, the essence of civil disobedience and rebellion and an invitation for either apostasy back to Rome a rival state to declare you ripe for "annexation."
The history of that part of Europe is littered with the results of such behavior. One of the root causes of the First World War after the rise of Prussia in the 19th century was a lingering sense of disenfranchisement, for the other European powers, including Rome, including many of the states with the Holy Roman Empire had played games with religion and politics and kept Germans, Prussians, Austrians, etc. from uniting and forming their own nation-states on a par with the others, especially after the Reformation, for Lutheranism and the Reformed churches gave those states a sense of unity against the oppression of the other nations, something Rome feared, as did Spain, England, and France. They would have willingly excused annexation of any state lax on heresy in order to keep the HRE states from consolidating politically. Remember, France, a Catholic nation in that era neighbors Switzerland. Will you honestly contend that letting Servetus go would not have given France an excuse to undermine Swiss states or Rome to "persuade" France to engage a conflict on the basis that Geneva was a hotbed not just for Protestants but anti-Trinitarians and who knows what else. This was the age of the Wars of Religion, not the 21st century.
This is hopelessly jejune. One fails to see how this has anything to do with Reformed theology. Reformed theology is not embodied by John Calvin.
>>>Thank you for proving my point that Calvin was in favor and actively involved in the question of the execution of a man because of his religious beliefs, something that Luther never advocated.
No, but then the God is Dead and higher criticism as movements originated in Lutheranism didn't they? Bultmann anybody?
Oh, and let's not forget the charges of Luther's anti-Semitism. Oh, that's right, that was civil disobedience and rebellion, so that justifies anti-Semitism.
If we're going to air the dirty laundry of the Reformers let's lay it all out; after all, you're calling us Nestorians now too. I'll just complete the picture here and call you and your fellow Lutherans a Monophysite.
Do you think that makes everybody feel better now, Dr. McCain? Isn't it nice to know we all know what names to call each other and what canards to hoist and spew.
t13, you wrote:
Christ's presence in His Holy Supper is founded neither on some "peculiar construction of the hypostatic union", nor on "an illocal, supernatural mode of presence", but rather on the creative Word of God.
A. How is this an exegetical conclusion? Please, derive this from the text.
B. A Roman Catholic can make the same argument here.
C.'An illocal, supernatural presence" is a direct quote from p. 208 of John Muller's Church Dogmatics , so Steve and I are only framing our articulation of what Lutheranism teaches here by what one of its own representative theologians has said. The book is published by Concordia, and, if I recall Dr. McCain is, how shall we say, rather well attached to Concordia.
The original question here is how does the above statement differ saying Christ is spiritually present to the faith of believers in communion, especially when Luther himself said, "“Not only was Christ in heaven when He walked on earth, but the Apostles too, and all of us as well, who are mortals here on earth, insofar as we believe in Christ.”
So, on the one hand it seems you have a need for Christ to be present to the faith of an infant and the church at his/her baptism, but then we the Reformed speak of Christ being spiritually present to the faith of believers in the Lord's Supper, Rev. McCain calls this "imaginative." Exactly how is it that Christ, the Apostles, and we are ubiquitous in both heaven and earth "insofar as we believe in Christ” (Luther) any less imaginative than Christ being spiritually present to the faith of believers in communion?
I would like to thank everyone for the fact this blog site does engage in serious and thoughtful discussion of important issues. While I do strongly disagree with a number of things I read here, I nonetheless do respect the fact that persons here do hold to and advocate for strong confessional commitment based on what they believe to the teaching of God's Word, such commitments make theological debate possible, unlike much that passes for "dialogue" today where everyone in the end just accepts "reconciled diversity."
ReplyDeleteAs for the one book published by Concordia Publishing House. It is a view articulated by a Lutheran professor, written in the mid-20th century.
I would suggest we stick with the Book of Concord of 1580 and its contents as the better way to speak to what is held to be formal church confession in Lutheranism.
>I would like to thank everyone for the fact this blog site does engage in serious and thoughtful discussion of important issues. While I do strongly disagree with a number of things I read here, I nonetheless do respect the fact that persons here do hold to and advocate for strong confessional commitment based on what they believe to the teaching of God's Word, such commitments make theological debate possible, unlike much that passes for "dialogue" today where everyone in the end just accepts "reconciled diversity."
ReplyDeleteWell said, and charitable. Thank you, Mr. McCain.
Question: does this site contain the real thing?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bookofconcord.org/
Or is it watered down like some modern versions of the Westminster Confession of Faith get watered down?
Dear k7 [why not k9?], you could then say you are a watchdog for Calvinism!
ReplyDeleteYou ask about wwww.bookofconcord.org
That happens to be my web site.
Yes, the text there is the "real deal" -- an older English translation of the Book of Concord, out of copyright, public domain.
I also recommend the other documents there as helpful insghts into how confessional Lutherans regard their Confessions, etc.
Can I just ask as stupid but necessary question: how is 'Pieper' pronounced?
ReplyDeleteWe are asked to refer to the Formula of Concord. Okay, then does this mean all we have to do is quote the WCF or the LCBF if you ask for exegesis?
ReplyDeleteRev. McCain is focusing on John Calvin, so we are perfectly free to quote Mueller as a representative theologian in response to him. We only quoted Mueller through taking our cue from his own posts. If he is going to focus on Calvin, then we should be free to look at one of your representative theologians.
Attempts to point us to the FoC meet with little sympathy from me when I ask for exegesis:
The FoC alludes to locality and illocality: 14] The fourth: That God has and knows of various modes of being in any place, and not only the one [is not bound to the one] which philosophers call _localis_ (local) for circumscribed].
So, quoting Mueller or Pieper or another representative theologian is not out of school here, since it seems they implicitly borrow this language.
Giving a set of references in the FoC is not exegesis. I see no exegetical defense there. I see prooftexting. An exegesis is a long or short paper discussing the meaning of the pertinent Scriptures using lexical definitions, linguistic analysis, context, etc. Would you seriously consider it exegesis if you disputed irresistible grace and I simply said, "Read the WCF and John 6:44?"
Therefore your appeal is circular. I request exegesis. You refer us to a confession for that exegesis. The FoC offers statements with prooftexts, not exegesis of the texts. Thus, you are implicitly arguing the premise in your response. Your response is telling. Your view of the word "is" here is driven by your confession, not the text.
With respect to what you posted that prompted my request for exegesis we find this:
As Chrysostom says (in Serm. de Pass.) in his Sermon concerning the Passion: Christ Himself prepared this table and blesses it; for no man makes the bread and wine set before us the body and blood of Christ, but Christ Himself who was crucified for us. The words are spoken by the mouth of the priest, but by God's power and grace, by the word, where He speaks: "This is My body," the elements presented are consecrated in the Supper. And just as the declaration, Gen. 1, 28: "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth," was spoken only once, but is ever efficacious in nature, so that it is fruitful and multiplies, so also this declaration ["This is My body; this is My blood"] was spoken once, but even to this day and to His advent it is efficacious, and works so that in the Supper of the Church His true body and blood are present.
That, T13, is not exegesis. What is the grammatical-exegesis of the pertinent texts of Scripture in the FoC? I really don't care what your confession says the text means and what John Chrysostom said. They are useful for insight, but not a substitute for exegesis any more than me quoting the LCBF back to you is exegesis. I care what Scripture says from the direct exegesis of it.
>> The "illocal, supernatural mode of presence" is what is used to discuss the omnipresence of Christ's human nature.
A statement exceeding Scripture. Once again, where is the exegesis here? So far, I see nothing.
>>What the entire quotation (and the surrounding pages of Mueller, if you read them) ends at is not some escape route that is little different from the vague "spiritual" presence mentioned above.
On the contrary, I find that quite vague and question begging. It reads, "... for they explain the omnipresence of Christ's human nature not by way of local extension, but by way of His illocal, supernatural mode of presence." As I pointed out earlier, this is inadequate, for it localizes His human nature in bread and wine. So, it isn't illocal, it is localized in bread and wine.
>>It is, instead, a clear statement in full opposition to some "spiritual" presence. "Illocal" simply means that Christ's human nature is not bound to one location or another, such as his being tied to sitting quite literally, and only, at the right hand of God the Father. This does not mean that Christ Jesus is everywhere; it only means that he is not bound to the confines of his human nature.
Then He's not omnipresent as such, this is a special category of omnipresence, but the quote you offered is as an attempt to explain omnipresence.
>>> Because of the communication of attibutes, he is, however, able to be where he promises to be and where he wills to be. And where has he promised to be? In his Supper.
Yes, in your sacramentology this is defined as in the elements themselves, not simply to the faith of the believers. To say that Christ’s humanity is present in the elements divinizes His human nature and further restricts it to the elements at the Lord’s Table, so His humanity shares ubiquity with His divinity with respect to the elements at the Table, yet omnipresence (ubiquity) means God (in all 3 Persons) is present everywhere. Thus, not only is Christ with respect to His human nature in heaven, He is present on earth in the elements in time when the Lord’s Supper is celebrated. That makes his human nature subject to time as well as spatial constraints on earth as well as heaven. Steve is correct, this is implicitly pantheistic. That’s one reason why Calvin rejected the notion of ubiquity of Christ’s body in the elements; it involves too many equivocations on the nature of time and space and what and does and does not constitute localization that necessitate extra-biblical ideas and doesn’t appear to be supportable from Scripture. Calvin stakes out a position between that of Luther and Zwingli. In Lutheran sacramentology, we have an illocal presence that is localized, a human nature that is not fully human, an omnipresence that is limited in presence, a divinization that makes Him tangible, and not a theophany, which is an altogether different manifestation. You end up with something other than 2 natures in one Person with ” the property of each nature being preserved.” You have a Docetic set of elements and a Monophystic Christ.
We don't have confessions to pick and choose from, or which can simply be ignored if we don't like them. Try again.
ReplyDeleteA. Actually, the LCBF 2 and the WCF are 95 % identical. A Presbyterian will appeal to the WCF, I will appeal to the LCBF. In their sections on the Lord's Supper one says "sacrament" the other "ordinance."
B. As I pointed out, I really don't care what your confession tells you to believe, I care about what Scripture says. Your confession presents no exegesis. It presents prooftexts, much like ours. If that's what passes for exegesis, then I can just quote my confessions.
C. I'm not asking you to ignore your confession, I am asking you for the Scriptural exegesis behind your confession.
>>>Pre-determined, pre-set categories bound such argumentation, especially when it comes to what God can and cannot do.
A. Not at all. I am simply looking a Lutheranism's inner logic. You say that the presence is "illocal" as a means to explain "ominpresence." How? We are not told.
B. Omnipresence: God transcends all spatial limitations and is immediately present in every part of His creation or that everything and every body are immediately in His presence. The question here isn't whether or not simply if Christ is omnipresent, the question at hand is how His human nature in particular is present in the particular elements of the Supper? If if we stipulate that the communication of attributes is ontological, then how does this underwrite ubiquity? Remember, this is all in response to Rev. McCain's assertion that the Reformed view is "imaginative." The more you write, the more you show your view is VERY imaginative indeed.
C. Furthermore, there is a difference between saying Christ is present in the Supper as a whole or the faith of believers and Christ is present in the actual elements of bread and wine. That could require a confusion of the two natures. Yet Chalcedon itself says here that the characteristics of each nature are preserved, so you must establish somthing to showing it is located in bread and wine, tangible, physical elements and maintain that the characteristics of humanity are also preserved. You have not shown any exegesis of Scripture to support your view of the pertinent Scriptures.
D. Speaking of which, you have been asked for exegesis, yet you point to the Formula of Concord, so you're simply assuming what you need to prove without benefit of argument, so by that yardstick I can point to the LCBF and say that's my standard, since you patently do the same with the Formula.
E. You're also trying to change the subject. I originally requested your exegesis, now you divert attention to Calvin and the concept of omnipresence within standard Theology Proper. That is, itself, a topic of its own.
>>>This was Calvin's central error: to define God in human terms, to conform Him to the dictates of human logic, rather than to attempt to suss out what can be known through God's own description of himself, God's own revelation of Himself in Scripture.
But Lutheranism doesn't do that does it? If it did it would simply repeat the pertinent Scriptures and leave it at that.
Note from the post above: a) It tries to explain the real presence by appeal to its peculiar construction of the hypostatic union.
b) It tries to explain the real presence by appeal to “an illocal, supernatural mode of presence.”
>>>*Of course* Calvin "rejected the notion of ubiquity of Christ's body in the elements" --- it didn't fit his notions of how the world worked. Not an unusual error.
a. By asserting your view is, in fact, the biblical position, you are, in fact, assuming that Scripture is telling you about the real world.
b. What evidence can you show that Luther did not construct his sacramentology based on his notion of how the world worked?
c. Two can play this game: *Of course* Luther "rejected the Reformed notion of Christ's body in the elements" --- it didn't fit his notions of how the world worked.
d. Baptistry tends to do its own exegesis of these texts anyway, so I am not necessarily bound to a confession in that respect. Many do their church confessions from the bottom up starting with Scripture anyway. You're basically arguing that all the other groups that do not hold to ubiquity do so from aprioristic notions not Scripture, but this is just an assertion. You're the one challenging the Reformed view by merely appealing to your confession. You have made no case for your sacramentology as any truer to Chalcedon or Scripture than ours.
>>See for yourself, and follow the bouncing ball: divinizes (assumption) ==> restricts it to (no; we teach that the Supper is where we know Christ promises to be --- an immense difference, to be sure --- he can be wherever he chooses to be, thank you very much; assumption)
Of course He can be wherever He chooses to be. Nobody disputes that. However, it isn't simply a question of place, it is a question of object. It isn't His presence we are discussing, it is the way He is present. Christ is not simply in a place in your sacramentology, His human nature itself is located in particular inanimate objects. To do this, you have to assume that the communication of attributes as at the level of the natures. You have no argument for this. Where does this come from? Scripture? I haven't seen an exegetical argument yet. Or is it a holdover from one of the Lateran Councils and Catholicism?
>>>omnipresence means... (assumption) ==> thus...present everywhere (conclusion based on above assumptions, wrong though they may be)
If you have a different understanding of the term, then by all means present it. So far, like your exegesis, you have produced nothing. Don't castigate me for a lack of exegesis, when we would not be having this chat right now if you would comply with that request. That won't work. This entire post of yours strikes me as an attempt to avoid doing that.
>>Are they Biblical, or are they grounded in reason? If they are Biblical, then I'm wrong. So be it. If they are grounded in reason, it's time to take another look at the Scriptures.
False antithesis. Why can't they both grounded in both Scripture and reason? I would say that logic is itself an attribute of God (John Frame), so the question isn't whether not it is grounded in reason or Scripture, but which makes best sense of both. What is biblical is also logical, or else we can't make sense of Scripture and we descend into irrationalism itself. Of course, we have seen that at work in Lutheran historical theology and epistemology in the past, haven't we?
Also, you've not given an argument that they are biblical. You haven't complied with a request to exegete Scripture have you? No, you've appealed to your confession, but confessional statements tell us nothing about the exegesis of the Scriptures themselves, they are conclusions drawn based on it. Fair enough, then let's see what lies behind the confession's statements. That's why I am asking for exegesis.. My question is why are those conclusions warranted and necessitated by the text of Scripture itself? When I ask you say "Read the Formula" and assume that I don't understand Lutheranism. That doesn't answer my question. In fact, this is a particular trait I have noticed about internet Lutherans that discuss this very topic. When we ask for their exegesis they say "You don't know anything about Lutheranism;" and then they say "Read the Formula of Concord." Okay, fine, but where is the exegesis for the statements in Concord?