Zwingli, Luther and Calvin had different views of the meaning of Jesus’ words “this is my body.”...

Zwingli, Luther and Calvin had different views of the meaning of Jesus’ words “this is my body.” How were their views related to their respective views of Christ (be specific)?

As we examined in class that our sacramentlogy is closely related to our Christology, so we see how we view the God-Son will shape how we view the sacraments. For Zwingli the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was a real absence of Jesus Christ and a memorial of what the historical Jesus Christ had done.

Luther held a view that Jesus Christ’s humanity and divinity took on properties of one another, so that in glorification the physical body of Jesus Christ could take on the divine properties. This led specifically to Luther’s view of the Lord’s Supper that while not transubstantiation was viewed as consubstantiation. This meant that while he didn’t believe that the priest’s actions are what made the bread and wine the physical body and blood of Christ, but that it was God’s grace that brought the physical body and blood into the elements. This opens the door for a Roman Catholic view of grace that would be undoing the very justification that Luther preached. It also shows us a Jesus Christ who could not be fully human anymore and thus could not pay the penalty for our sins.

Calvin however, believed in a God-Son who had the divinity engrafted into a divine person and a humanity that was engrafted into a divine person. This view allows for Jesus Christ to be both fully God, divine and having all the attributes of God and to be fully human, physical, confined to this world, to a body and to be just like us. The personhood of Jesus Christ is what allows him to pay the penalty for our sins and this is what the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is to call us to remember. That the wrath of God was poured out into the broken body and the shedding of blood, like the Passover Lamb, provides salvation for all who partake in a worthy manner. This reality is what allows Calvin to say that there is a spiritually real presence in the sacrament as we partake because Luther’s fleshly eating and Zwingli’s absent sacrament both deny the divine personhood of Jesus Christ.