Coena Domini: Mode not presence; consubstantiation; Luther's 1519 wish
What remains of the dispute is not the thing itself — whether Christ’s Body is present in the Holy Supper, or whether it is eaten — but the mode of both.
Some devised an inclusion of Christ’s Body that leaves the substance of the bread intact and treats the Body as present without spatial distance. That teaching goes by Consubstantiation, also Coexistence, and formerly Impanation. It arose in Berengarian times, or was drawn from Lombard’s Sentences, Book IV, Distinction 11, Chapter 4, and Peter of Ailly, Cardinal of Cambrai, approved it. Luther preferred it to Transsubstantiation, though his own explanations varied — Hospinian’s History of the Sacraments, Part II, from page 7 onward, treats the shifts at length.
How much better if Luther had held to what he himself said in 1519, before the Sacramentarian contest, in the German sermon On the Sacrament of the True Body of Christ (Jena, Volume I, folio 201–202 and following): three things in the Sacrament of Christ’s Body ought to be known. First, the sacrament or sign, external and visible, under the form of bread and wine. Second, the signification of that sacrament, which ought to be internal and spiritual. Third, faith, which ought to join both in the sacrament’s use. He then explains Paul’s κοινωνία in 1 Corinthians 10, of which we receive a sure sign in the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood.
Add Article XII of the Augsburg Confession: the Sacraments were instituted as signs and testimonies of God’s will toward us, set forth to awaken and confirm faith — faith that should believe the promises the Sacraments exhibit and show.
Latin
Caeterum non de re ipsa, praesentia Corporis Christi in S. Coena aut manducatione illius, sed de modo utriusque, controversia est. Inclusio vero Corporis Christi, manente panis substantia, ut ἀδιαστάτως praesentis, dicta Consubstantiatio, alias Coexistentia, olim Impanatio, a Berengarianis temporibus, nonnullis excogitata fuit, vel ex Lombardo Sentent. L. IV. D. xi. C. 4. & a Petro de Alliaco Cardinali Camerac. probata; quam Transsubstantiationi Lutherus praetulit, licet in semet explicando varius, ut fuse Hospinianus Hist. Sacrament. Parte II. p. 7. & seq. Utinam vero Lutherus adhaesisset sententiae, expressae illi A. 1519. ante certamen Sacramentar. Concione Germ. De Sacramento Veri Corporis Christi, &c. Tomo I. Jen. fol. 201. 202. &c. Sacramentum Corporis Christi tria habet quae sciri debent: Primum est sacramentum, sive signum quod externum & visibile est, in forma Panis & Vini: Alterum, significatio hujus sacramenti, quae debet esse interna & Spiritualis, &c. Tertium, fides quae debet utrumque conjungere in usu sacramenti; Explicata deinceps κοινωνία Paulina. 1. Cor. X. cujus certum signum accipiamus in Sacramento Corporis & Sang. Christi. Adde Artic. XII. Confess. August. Sacramenta instituta esse ut sint signa & testimonia Voluntatis Dei erga nos, proposita ad excitandam & confirmandam fidem, &c. Quae credat promissionibus quae per Sacramenta exhibentur & ostenduntur.