Consubstantiation

The name and what it means

The word, from the Latin consubstantiatio, means being present together in substance. Unlike transubstantiation, it holds that the bread and wine are not changed but remain, and that Christ's body and blood are truly present with them. The name has mostly been given from outside, by those describing or criticising Lutheran teaching.

Lutherans have generally declined it, because it can suggest that two substances blend into some third thing, or that Christ's body is enclosed in the bread like an object in a box. They speak instead of a ‘sacramental union’ between the bread and Christ's body, and confess that his body and blood are truly present in, with and under the bread and wine. The name of this entry, then, is an outsiders' label.

The Lord's words as they stand

Lutheran teaching rests on taking the Lord's words just as they stand:

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, spoke a blessing and broke it, and gave it to the disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is My body.”

Matthew 26:26

Paul asks, "is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?" (1 Corinthians 10:16), and warns that whoever eats unworthily "will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord" (1 Corinthians 11:27). Lutherans read this to mean that Christ's body is truly given to all who eat, to believers for life and to unbelievers for judgment. Augustine said that "Peter and Judas received of the same bread, but Peter to life, Judas to death" Augustine. Lutherans take this to mean that both received Christ's body; the Reformed, that both received the same sign, but only faith receives what it signifies.

Luther's Small Catechism teaches that the Sacrament of the Altar, instituted by Christ himself, is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ under the bread and wine, given for Christians to eat and drink Luther's Small Catechism. The Augsburg Confession confesses that Christ's body and blood are truly present in the Supper and are distributed to those who eat Augsburg Confession, art. 10.

Luther, Zwingli and after

At Marburg in 1529 Luther met Zwingli. As the story is told, Luther chalked the Latin words Hoc est corpus meum, ‘This is my body’, on the table and would not be moved from them. The two sides agreed on fourteen articles and most of the fifteenth, yet parted over the bodily presence of Christ in the Supper The Marburg Articles.

The difference is tied to how Christ's ascended humanity is understood. Lutherans teach that because Christ's two natures are inseparably united in one person, his exalted human nature shares the majesty of his divinity, and that ‘the right hand of God’ is not a place but God's power everywhere Formula of Concord, art. 8. So Christ can be bodily present where he has promised to be, in the Supper (see the lesson The ascension and Christ’s reign).

Where the traditions differ

The Catholic Church rejects the view that the substance of the bread and wine remains, and teaches transubstantiation. The Reformed confess a spiritual presence, holding that Christ's body is in heaven; they fear that a body present in many places at once would no longer be a true human body. Lutherans fear that the Reformed view weakens the Lord's plain words and pulls Christ's two natures apart. Churches that hold memorialism see the Supper above all as a meal of remembrance and confession. The differences are deep, yet every tradition treasures this meal in which Christ gives himself to his people. The views are set side by side under the Lord’s Supper and in What are baptism and the Lord's Supper?