Lecture 17.docx

1523 at the first disputation, he rejects the mass of sacrifice in light of what he regard in light of on Christological grounds, Christ\'s one and once and for all sacrifice on Calvary and talks about in the published version of the disputation talks about the Lord\'s Supper as a commemoration....

1523 at the first disputation, he rejects the mass of sacrifice in light of what he regard in light of on Christological grounds, Christ\'s one and once and for all sacrifice on Calvary and talks about in the published version of the disputation talks about the Lord\'s Supper as a commemoration. So we can see the seeds of his later thinking there. But he doesn\'t make any statement on the real presence, on the key issue of the real presence, doesn\'t make any statement there. It\'s in 1524, he receives a letter from a friend, Cornelis Hearn. Seems to be invisible. Oh, let me just spell it for you. H-O-N. With an umlaut over the O. It\'s easy to spell. H-O-Umlaut-N. Or if you want to anglicize it, H-O-E-N. Cornelis Hearn. Cornelis Hearn is a humanist. He\'s one of the sort of the intellectual humanist circles and in this letter to Zwingli, he points out to Zwingli that it might be possible to interpret the word is in the words of institution, this is my body, as symbolizes. If that strikes us as not a particularly radical move today. But remember this is an era when symbolic views of the Lord\'s Supper would have been heretical in the Middle Ages, would have involved risk. You know, it\'s amazing the cultural framework and linguistic framework would not have been conducive to understanding this as symbolizes. And Zwingli later claims that this letter really clarifies his thinking on the matter. As is his won\'t, he claims I\'d come to that position before, but Hearn was the guy who really brought everything into focus for me. And Hearn in this letter also emphasized that the benefits of the sacrament came from the strength of the faith of the one receiving it. This is, so 1524 is the moment when symbolic language comes into Zwingli\'s thinking. And over the next five years, Luther and Zwingli will exchange a series of increasingly bad tempered treatise and pamphlets on this issue. Until in 1529, our old friend Philip of Hesse, remember him, man with a terrible marital problems, decides that it would be useful to get Luther and Zwingli together to discuss the issue. Philip of Hesse\'s mind at this point is, you know, this is the late 1520s, that we\'re reaching a point now where it\'s clear that the Roman, that the Holy Roman Empire may not fully back the Reformation. Things could get very nasty militarily, very quickly. There is a need for military alliances among Protestants. The obvious alliance is a sort of north-south axis, with the German Lutheran princes and cities in the north allying themselves with the Swiss Protestant reforms, Swiss cantons in the south. And so Philip arranges for a meeting in October 1529 at the castle in the German, southern German city of Marburg. Again, if you get a chance to go to Germany on a Reformation tour at any point, Marburg is a must-see. It\'s a beautiful medieval town. It is a town of some historic theological significance, not only for the Marburg Colloquy of 1529, but it was also home of probably the most influential new liberal, but a New Testament scholar of the 20th century. Any guesses? Rudolf Bultmann was professor at Marburg, and in fact was probably in class with J. Gresser Meitchen, founder of Westminster, studied at Marburg. And Bultmann was probably, they probably knew each other. And Bultmann wrote a review of Meitchen\'s book on Paul, actually. There\'s a sort of connection there. But hi, it\'s built on a hill, and at the top of the hill is the castle, Marburg Castle, still beautifully preserved today. Cobbled streets leading up to it. You can imagine the drama as Luther and Zwingli and their retinue of exceptional theological minds roll into town and head up the hill to the meeting at Marburg Castle. On Luther\'s side, the Philip Melanchthon. Philip Melanchthon will be with him. On the reformed side, and this is where it\'s going to be unfortunate if, let me see if my pen comes through any clearer on the overhead. Zwingli brings with him the reformer of Basel, a man called Oecolampadius. Oecolampadius. Oecolampadius. Johannes Oecolampadius, the great reformer of Basel, will die a rather horrible death in 1531 when he bangs his neck and it becomes an abscess and takes him out. Oecolampadius, one of the great losses to the Reformation. is Zwingli\'s patristic specialist because significant amount of the debate that takes place will be debates over interpretations of patristic early church authors. What was the consensus position on the church on the Lord\'s Supper? Oecolampadius is Zwingli\'s patristics man. Another figure who will be there. Martin Butzer. Butzer was first witnessed Luther at the Heidelberg Disputation. At that point he was a Dominican. Since then he\'s left the Dominican Brotherhood. He\'s married. Butzer will go on to be the great reformer of Strasbourg. I mentioned him earlier in the week. He\'s the one who dies in Cambridge as a professor at Cambridge ultimately. Butzer is the great ecumenical brains of the Reformation. These are men for whom the tearing apart of the church was a deep tragedy. And Butzer has a delightful spirit and is continually striving to try to find common ground and agreement. Butzer will literally run from room to room in the Marburg colloquy, proclaiming agreement when they find various verbal formulations they may be able to sign up to. So these are, and others, these will be the men who are at Marburg and the debate takes place and they come to agreement on 14 and a half out of 15 theological points. They come very close to forging a Lutheran reformed agreement. But on the issue of the real presence of Christ, the discussion falls apart and ultimately means there can be no military alliance. It\'s that serious. Couple of things in the background to that. I think by the time the Marburg colloquy meets, it\'s becoming clear that sufficient strength is emerging among the Lutheran princes for them not to need the reformed necessarily for their own protection. But that division, the division between Luther and Zwingliet Marburg does two things. One, it permanently divides Protestantism. It permanently divides Protestantism. And two, it makes the real presence a major concern for subsequent Lutheranism. When I was the sole reformed guy speaking at this Lutheran conference last year, you know, the number of people who came up to try to persuade me on the real presence afterwards. It\'s still the big thing in Lutheran circles why the reformed reject the real presence incomprehensible to them. Part of it\'s a hermeneutical issue of course. The debate takes place along hermeneutical lines. Luther wants to argue for a very literal interpretation of this is my body, to which the response of the Zwinglians is yes, but Christ says I am the true vine, I am the door, to which Luther\'s response is yes, we interpret Christ literally unless it is impossible to do so. Well that of course raises questions about the framework of possibility. Why is it impossible to say that Christ is the door, but not impossible to say that this bread and wine is his real body? And that points to the real difference between the Lutherans and the reformed is a Christological one. Connected to how the divine and the human relate in the person of Christ. The technical term that theologians use for this is the communication of attributes, or the Latin is the communicatio idiomatum, the communication of attributes. The question is, you know, if you\'re a Nicene, Chalcedonian on Christology, which you should be because that is the Christian position, how do the two natures relate to each other? The reformed, the Lutherans, Luther argues for the direct communication of properties between the natures. The direct communication of properties between the natures. What does this mean? That when the divine and human join together, the human actually takes on some of the characteristics of the divine. The omnipresence of the divine is communicated directly to the human nature. So the human nature of Christ becomes omnipresent. Now if you\'re a sharp theological mind at this point, you think, oh, so you\'re saying that Jesus\' body and blood are present in this cup of coffee, to which the answer is yes, that\'s exactly what I\'m saying. To which the obvious follow-up is, so why isn\'t drinking a latte from the Grace Coffee store, why isn\'t that a gospel action in the way that taking the Lord\'s Supper is? To which Luther would respond, because Christ has attached no promise to this particular action. No promises attached to the action of the Lord\'s Supper under the preaching of the Word, not to the drinking of coffee. The reformed reject that view of the communication of Christ\'s attributes on the grounds that they feel it contravenes boundaries established in the early church. If Christ\'s human nature takes on the quality of omnipresence, the reformed would say it actually ceases to be a human nature. Because one of the attributes of your human nature and mine is that it\'s locally circumscribed. A body that can be everywhere is not actually a body, according to the reformed. It\'s what theologians call, well, the reformed would say that the Lutherans make Christ into a tertium quid, it\'s the Latin term, a third something. You know, you mix together, you take, I don\'t know, a powdered drink, sports powder, and you add it to water, and what you have is neither a powder nor water. You have a sports drink. You have Gatorade. You no longer have powder, you no longer have water, you have Gatorade. So you can\'t say it\'s a powder, you can\'t say it\'s water, it\'s a third something. The reformed pushback on the Lutherans would be your doctrine of the Lord\'s Supper ultimately forces you to a position where you undermine the Incarnation. That you don\'t actually have a one who is fully God and fully man, you have somebody who is a third something, an amalgam, an amalgam of the divine and the human. So the reformed say, when we think about the communication of attributes, we actually say, the attributes are communicated indirectly to the person. How does that, now let\'s think about how does that practically work out? I can say to you, Jesus Christ dies upon the cross. The person of Jesus dies upon the cross. Does Jesus\'s divinity die on the cross? No. No. Jesus Christ dies on the cross according to his humanity. So it has a sort of, it underlies how we would pass, how we would understand language when we talk about Jesus Christ. We have to be careful that sometimes we\'re talking about the person, but specifically in terms of one nature or the other. The Lutheran pushback on that of course is well that too, breaches an early church boundary. Actually what you\'re doing there is you\'re so separating the two natures that actually you end up with two persons. It\'s Nestorianism. If the Lutherans are guilty of what would be technically called Eutychianism, they are late followers of the theology of Eutychies, they hate that because Eutychies is heretic, and they would say the reformed are late followers of another early church heretic, Nestorius, who so emphasized the distinct, or at least it was alleged, nobody\'s quite sure if he was framed or not, but the official story is that Nestorius so emphasized the distinction between the two natures that he ends up undermining the unity of the person. All of this is to say that the debate about the Lord\'s Supper tracks back to how you understand the Incarnation, and that\'s another way of seeing why this is important, why this is very important. For myself, I think that the reformed critique of Lutheran Christology is a good one. I think direct communication of properties between the natures is ineradicably problematic, although with some, I would want to qualify it in this way, it is clear that the post-resurrection body of Christ has certain attributes that my body doesn\'t have. It appears that he can walk through walls. He can also walk on water. These are things that typically I can\'t do. At the end of today\'s class, probably I\'m going to leave through the door. I\'m not going to simply materialize on the other side. So I\'ve debated my friend Carl Beckwith about this on stage once we had a debate, and his pushback was, yes, but you have to acknowledge that the Incarnation modifies the humanity in some way, particularly post-resurrection, because Christ\'s body does things that your body and my body can\'t do. As with so much Christian orthodoxy, I don\'t mean this in a provocative way, but I do say to students, there\'s a sense in which sometimes Christian orthodoxy is the sum total of the problems you can live with, as opposed to the sum total of the problems you can\'t live with. There are very few theological positions where one can grab a single text as a knockdown argument. Each theological doctrine connects to others, and ultimately you build a framework which simply works better than any other framework you can find. So all of this is to say the real difference between the Lutherans and the Reforms is Christological one. And I think Luther builds his Christology to justify his view of the Lord\'s Supper. If there was a Lutheran here now, he would have an aneurysm with me saying that. He would want to say, no, Luther builds his Lord\'s Supper on the basis of his Christology. I don\'t think so. I think Luther builds his Christology on the basis of the Lord\'s Supper. For Zwingli, of course, the significance of the Eucharist I think is twofold. It\'s memorial. It\'s an opportunity to cast our minds back to the death of Christ on the cross. And also he plays with the Latin word sacramentum, which in Latin also carries the meaning of military oath. So for Zwingli, for Luther, the importance of the Lord\'s Supper is Christ is really offered to you. Receive him by faith. For Zwingli, this is an opportunity to reflect upon the death of Christ and to publicly express our unity with those who are with us in the church service. I think on the whole, in evangelicalism, Zwingli is one by and large. Zwingli\'s one partly because he\'s easier to understand. He has a kind of common sense appeal. I do think, though, that if you\'re going to take a strong Zwinglian position, there are certain problems. One of the problems is John 6. You know, I said earlier, that\'s a key. The understanding of John 6, is it a Lord\'s Supper reference or not? And church history has provided strong arguments on both sides of that debate. You have to make a decision on that. And the other thing is twofold. I would say, one, the powerful language Paul uses about the Lord\'s Supper in 1 Corinthians 11, such that, you know, mockery of the Lord\'s Supper can lead to death. That implies that something more than mere symbolism is going on. The other part of it is, if the Lord\'s Supper is not of benefit in sanctification, in sealing the gospel in our hearts, etc., etc., then church discipline and excommunication really has no teeth in the Protestant world. If you teach your people that the Lord\'s Supper is just a mere symbol, then depriving them of it is not actually depriving them of very much at all. So those are things that I would want to take into account when I was sort of constructing my own understanding of the Lord\'s Supper. Yeah? Was there any difference between them, and related to partay in the Lord\'s Supper? The assumption was everybody present should partake. You could be excommunicated or banned in Protestantism as an act of discipline, but the default position would have been taking the Lord\'s Supper. Again, it tracks back to everybody as a member of society is also a member of the church. So if you\'re not taking the Lord\'s Supper, there\'s got to be a reason for it. Yeah? Is there a medium view kind of between the two? I\'m coming to that one in a second. It\'s called Calvin\'s view, and we\'ll come to it in a second. Yeah? At this point, are they giving the Lord\'s Supper to children as well? No. I don\'t think so. The arguments about Peter communion that have sort of wrapped Presbyterian circles in recent years. No, Peter communion is not the practice of the reformers, as I understand it. There has to be an age of discernment. And you see, even for Luther, you have to discern that the body and blood of Christ is objectively present in the Lord\'s Supper for the Lutherans. So if you take it as an unbeliever, you\'re still eating and drinking the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ in a very real way. You\'re doing it for damnation. You\'re bringing damnation on yourself by doing it. But Christ is still present. His presence is not dependent upon your faith or not. But, of course, that raises the seriousness of the Lord\'s Supper, that one is to eat it with discernment. And a child cannot eat the Lord\'s, you know, an infant could not eat the Lord\'s Supper with discernment. I did a satirical piece years ago that really upset the pedo communion guys where it was a spoof. It was one of those fake news reports about an obstetrician who had administered communion to a baby in the womb. It was called feto communion. And I put it up and Doug Wilson absolutely burst a blood vessel over it. He was very, very upset. And I got the first successful administration of communion to a baby in the womb, feto communion. And I know it was part of the fetal vision theology, that was it. But then somebody emailed me and sent me the PDF of a page of a book and said, you think it\'s satire, but sent me a page of a guy called James Jordan\'s commentary on the book of judges. Where James Jordan has Samuel, has a Samson receiving the Lord\'s grace through his mother\'s umbilical cord in the womb. So they\'d got there before me. You cannot satirize this stuff because it\'s always more extreme than you imagine it to be. Anyway, yeah, the media, I hesitate to call it a mediating position because it sounds like Calvin\'s ambition is to say, okay, we\'ve got these two guys, how can we find a way through the middle? Calvin\'s position is somewhat different. What Calvin does is we might somewhat crudely say that the debate between Luther and Zwingli is a debate over geographical placement. We could say that. It\'s a debate over location. And what, you know, obviously we should all feed upon Christ\'s body. However you read John 6, we all have to feed upon Christ\'s body. And we can say that Luther deals with that by bringing Christ down from heaven and putting him in the elements of the Lord\'s Supper. What Calvin does, Zwingli objects that saying, well, Christ doesn\'t return. Every time you have the Lord\'s Supper, then Christ is returning. Christ\'s body is at the right hand of the Father. The humanity of Christ is at the right hand of the Father and that is a location. For Luther, that\'s a metaphor for the power of Christ. For Zwingli, I think correctly, that\'s a, you know, the body has local dimensions. It\'s a location. What Calvin does, I think Calvin\'s relationship to Luther is interesting in that Calvin from one of the earliest comments that Calvin makes about his theological development is that initially he despised Zwingli and favored Luther because he\'d been told that Zwingli made the sacraments into mere symbols. So right from the get-go, Calvin\'s sympathies lie with Luther. However, I think Calvin is too good a theologian, and Lutherans would kill me for saying this, but too good a theologian to buy into Luther\'s Christology, this direct communication stuff. What Calvin does, I think he uses the Holy Spirit to solve the geographical problem. Remember Jesus\' last address to the disciples. He says, you know, you\'re sorry because I\'m going away, but it\'s good that I go away because if I go away, then the Lord will send the comforter. And I think what Jesus is doing there is indicating that the Spirit effectively annihilates geography. You don\'t need to be in the room with the physical Jesus Christ to have Christ present with you after he\'s gone to heaven because the Holy Spirit makes Christ present to you. So what Calvin does is he draws upon his theology of the Spirit relative to the Lord\'s Supper and says that when you take the Lord\'s Supper, you feed upon Christ by faith, and it\'s as if you are lifted to heaven to feed upon Christ by faith, by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit makes Christ present to you, even though his body is in heaven. So Calvin wants to emphasize, if you like, the reality and the proximity of Christ in the Lord\'s Supper in a way that you don\'t really get in Zwingli. Now one of the questions is, well, okay, what do I get then in the Lord\'s Supper that I don\'t get in the preaching of the Word? Well the answer is nothing for Calvin. You don\'t get anything in the Lord\'s Supper, you don\'t get in the preaching of the Word. But you get the same thing in a different way. The same thing in a different way. And you say, well, that\'s not very important then. Okay, how many of you are married? I guess a lot of you are married. Here\'s a little experiment to do on your wife\'s next birthday. And you can email me with the results, but don\'t send me your lawyer\'s fees. I hope you tell your wife you love her every day. You tell your wife you love her every day, but on her birthday you give her a present. Don\'t you? I hope you do. If you don\'t, man, you need to get onto that quick. You give your wife a present. Imagine on your next birthday, here\'s the experiment, don\'t get her a present. Don\'t get her a present. And when she says to you, why didn\'t you get me a present? Simply say to her, well, I told you I love you every day. If I change your mind, I\'ll let you know. And what is my present? She says, your present shows me you love me. Yeah, but I tell you I love you every day. My body language towards you tells you I love you. Why do I need to give you a present for? Well, I bet that will not be a plausible argument from her perspective. But you\'ve got to ask yourself why, because what is that present doing? It\'s not actually communicating anything to your wife that isn\'t communicated by you telling her that you love her. It\'s communicating the same thing, though, in a different and an important way. And I think that\'s a good analogy for understanding what Calvin\'s trying to get at in the Lord\'s Supper. His fear with Zwingli is that Zwingli\'s made it so merely symbolic that it really, it can\'t carry the weight that Paul puts on it in 1 Corinthians 11. On the other hand, he\'s acutely aware that we get all that, we get the whole of Christ through the preaching of the Word. But we get Christ differently and in a significant way through the Lord\'s Supper. That\'s why the Reformed will typically use the language of sign and seal when he\'s talking about the Lord\'s Supper. That\'s the language of the Westminster Standards, for example. The Lord\'s Supper sacraments are a sign and a seal. They don\'t just symbolize the gospel. They seal the gospel on our hearts in a particular way. And that\'s really the way sort of Calvin goes. So does Calvin believe that the Lord\'s Supper is symbolic? Yes, but not only symbolic. He believes that in the liturgical action of eating the bread and the wine, the gospel is made real and present to us. The same gospel, the same Christ, in a different way, in the same way that giving your wife a present makes your love, it\'s both a sign of your love and it\'s a seal of your love as well. I mean, my wedding ring, it\'s a sign of my marriage and it\'s a seal of my marriage. When I look at my wedding ring, it isn\'t just there for me to cast my mind back to all those years ago when I said I do in the church. It\'s more than that. It\'s more than that. So if you\'re interested in exploring Calvin\'s position further, I think the best\... You can read the sections in Book Four of the Institutes, that\'s great. My favorite book on the Lord\'s Supper is Robert Bruce\'s The Mystery of the Lord\'s Supper, which was a set of sermons preached I think in the 1570s or 1580s by the Scottish Presbyterian theologian Robert Bruce. It\'s available in print from Christian-focused publications. And certainly if you\'re wanting to read one of the best cases for the Calvinistic position, even if you\'re not persuaded by it, Robert Bruce is the one. I teach a course on Scottish Presbyterianism at Westminster and that\'s the book where I get the most consistent, wow, that really changed my thinking about the Lord\'s Supper and about church from any book I recommend on any course at Westminster. Robert Bruce\'s Mystery of the Lord\'s Supper is the one. Not Robert the Bruce, he was a military leader. This is Robert Bruce, the Presbyterian theologian. But he\'s very good upon, it\'s the same Christ but received in a different way. And I think the advantage of\... Although I think there\'s a certain element of sanctified speculation in some of the language Calvin uses about the Lord\'s Supper, you know, our minds are raised to heaven and feed upon Christ there. You won\'t find that literally in Scripture. I think he\'s trying to capture something there. I do find Calvin, ultimately his position allows me, I think, to do more justice to Paul than a real strict Zwinglian line would. And I myself am deeply sympathetic in seeing John 6 as a reference pointing forward to the Last Supper as well. Although that\'s a point of legitimate disagreement, I think, among Christians, the exegesis of that passage. Yeah, our resident Zwinglian. No, with Zwingli and Luther, was there a legitimate way for them to come together and to be unified in the Reformation without undermining the importance of the issue? Yeah, for those at a distance, the question is, was there a legitimate way for Luther and Zwingli to come together in a way that would not have compromised them, but would have\... is that fair to say? You\'re saying they would not have compromised them, but would have led to more unity. One wishes so. There is this apocryphal statement, I\'ve never, again, never been able to trace to a primary source that Luther read Calvin just before he died and said, wow, if this had been around in the 1520s, I think we could have found a way forward. I find that hard to believe, actually, because Luther is so strong on that. Melanchthon, of course, and this is one of the reasons why Melanchthon becomes a bit of a bad guy for post-Reformation Lutheranism. Melanchthon modifies the Augsburg Confession in 1540 to water down the language about the Lord\'s Supper. And it\'s the 1540 version of the Augsburg Confession that Calvin subscribes. It\'s called the variata in Lutheran history, the varied, as opposed to the invariata, the invariate text. And that earned Melanchthon the excoriation, after Luther died, the excoriation of Luther\'s followers. Precisely because on that key issue of do unbelievers literally eat the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, Calvin has to say no, Calvin\'s with Zwingli on that. And that becomes a point of real identity for the Lutherans. So to go back to your question, I\'m not sure they could have done, partly because of Luther\'s personality, and then later because the struggle for the legacy of Luther focuses in on this issue and it becomes a matter of face and territory for post-Reformation Lutherans. So I don\'t think so. I think that the key issue of do unbelievers eat the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, that\'s the problem. And there isn\'t any real common ground they could find there. Certainly Melanchthon is much more friendlier to Calvin than Luther is to Zwingli, to the extent that some of Melanchthon, you know, Melanchthon, some of his followers are decried by their enemies as crypto Calvinists. They\'re under suspicion on this issue. But you know, humanly speaking, it is a tragedy. What would the reformation have looked like if a powerful Swiss-German alliance had emerged? If the Protestant church had maintained a degree of unity in its early years that it didn\'t have? They\'re interesting questions to ask. And I think one has to say whatever would have happened, the history would have been significantly different. Yeah? So in Calvin\'s view, is Christ present by faith or is he present for Luther? Christ is present by faith for Calvin. And really so because our minds are lifted up to heaven where he is, not that he\'s pulled down. So in some ways what Calvin is doing is he\'s not denying anything that Zwingli says, but he\'s massively enriching it and expanding it. He is denying things that Luther says, such that, you know, is Christ present? No, not in a real sense. And I think Calvin in his talk about the role of the Holy Spirit would have been vulnerable to the schwermer accusation coming from Luther as well. Yeah? Luther said that you are of a different spirit. How did Zwingli and Calvin feel about it? Was this that serious event where they thought, you know, Luther wasn\'t saved or? No, well I think Zwingli and Luther hated each other. We do read in the two accounts of the Marburg colloquy, you know, Zwingli weeps when he realizes it\'s all going south. In the reformed Zwinglian account, Zwingli weeps because, you know, it\'s a tragedy that the church is being split. In the Lutheran account, Zwingli weeps crocodile tears, secretly satisfied that his scheme to split the church down the middle has sort of reached fruition. So between those two real bad blood. Luther is an interesting figure. Later Protestants are very hesitant to criticize Luther. Calvin is very hesitant to criticize Luther. He makes a statement somewhere, you know, he\'s angry bullheaded guy but goodness me I\'d follow him through the gate to the gates of hell. It\'s not exactly that but it\'s that kind of statement. You know, I have such a high regard for him that even though he\'s an unbearable person, yes, you know, I would throw myself, you know, onto a stake for him. Luther is such a person of such titanic heroic proportions. Even in the 17th century when John Owens critiquing Lutheranism, he doesn\'t criticize Luther. I mean they know Luther was the problem but they don\'t criticize Luther. They criticize Luther\'s followers. They get at it by going after his followers. They get at the theological issues by picking on Westphal or Hesousius or somebody like this. They don\'t go after Luther. So I think we can say Luther had, because he\'d taken such a brave stand and because he was her hero, they don\'t touch him. They don\'t touch him. You mentioned that if you don\'t think John 6 is a better word, so I think you\'re moving in a swingy direction. Well I think you take away a major exegetical support for non-Slinglian positions. So I think you will tend that way. John 6 is on my side. It isn\'t a Eucharistic reference. It\'s symbolic. You know, it points towards a symbolic understanding. So I think when Zwingli is saying I\'ve got John 6, he means it isn\'t a Eucharistic reference as you need to make it. It actually doesn\'t play into that at all. And it\'s pointing towards an eating of the flesh that is spiritual. It\'s not, this is not a physical eating that John 6 is talking about. It\'s a spiritual eating. Can it still be a Eucharistic, because it seems like it\'s spiritual there and it\'s spiritual in the Eucharist, how is that not in alignment? Yeah, well Zwingli doesn\'t really think there is a spiritual eating in the Eucharist. Calvin does, but for Zwingli it\'s really a symbolic thing. It\'s a memorial and it\'s a symbol of our unity together here and now. Zwingli is not really keen on the idea of the Eucharist as spiritual eating at all. For him it\'s the symbolic aspect of it that\'s key. Would he say that believing is spiritually eating? Yeah. Does no one want to say that? Yeah, yeah. But partly this is, you know, Zwingli has a strongly platonic background as well, which I think he\'s picked up in part through Erasmus. So the whole idea of a physical thing having a profoundly spiritual impact is alien to his philosophy as well. That you are to get rid of the physical in order to get to the truly spiritual and the truly truthful. That\'s the sort of the platonic trajectory. So Luther also abandons references to Augustine when he realizes that Augustine may not be quite as conducive to his case as he thought. So. So I\'m just trying to, one last follow up. Yeah. So if he thinks John 6 is believing is eating spiritual, that doesn\'t seem like a far ways to go because, you know, for him in regards to the Lord\'s Supper, if it\'s also believing, you know, then through that symbolic act it\'d be partaking spiritually as well. Yeah, but then you get to the big issue is, is Christ present for the unbelievers who don\'t have faith? And Luther wants to say yes. Christ is there for their condemnation whereas for Zwingli, no. Because eating is spiritual eating and it\'s done by faith and is therefore not connected to the elements in that kind of intimate way. Zwingli ends rather tragically on the battlefield of the second battle, second war of Capel, K-A-P-P-E-L in 1531. And when the news arrives in Wittenberg that Zwingli has been slain on the battlefield, Luther\'s only comment is, those who live by the sword may expect to die by the sword. No sympathy whatsoever for Zwingli at that point. So, that then is Luther on the Lord\'s Supper.