I became panicked recently because I could not remember why “is always means is even in metaphors” and more specially how this applied to the all-important words of our Lord “This is My Body.” With so many, particularly LCMS pastors, colloquizing from Reformed and Evangelical church bodies this will increasingly become an issue.
This issue for me dates back to 1983 when I went to Chaplain Officer Basic Course right after seminary, June-July ’83. I had been taught this very clearly based on the professors then at the seminary. So when I got thrown in with all those different confessions, there was some sinking but more swimming.
I could, surprisingly at the time, easily hold my own with the Roman Catholics. They were upfront about infused grace, works being needed for forgiveness of sins committed after being baptized, and Transubstantiation. I found Calvinists didn’t debate the Real Presence because they thought we were just talking differing modes. These were like boxers who appear to hug the opponent in the ring not because their friends, but they don’t want to get hit anymore. But the Baptists in particular were spoiling for a fight on this topic.
They maintained “This is My body” was a metaphor in the same way, “I am the door, the light, the bread,” etc. were. I could remember no way to explain the difference, and I had to admit that their examples were metaphor. I knew that “is” still couldn’t mean signify in those sentences, but I couldn’t explain why.
Thankfully, the Mrs. on my ordination day, August 7, 1983 had given me Krauth’s The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology as a gift. You can find it on Google books. It’s harder to find in print.
Below are a few notes I took from Krauth in 2012 the second time I read it. I have MANY more but, these get to the point of this blog.
God is a rock. “The resolution into the literal lies in the word rock not in the word ‘is.’ So when we say, Christ is the door, the vine, the foundation, the corner-stone, the resolution of the expression into what is absolutely literal, turns not upon the word ‘is,’ but on the word ‘door,’ ‘vine,’ or other noun, as the case may be” (613). See, Christ is not that door over there but the Door to heaven. He’s not that rock in your yard, but He is the Rock of Ages.
“…language itself would commit suicide if it could tolerate the idea that the substantive verb shall express not substance but symbol” (Krauth, Con. Ref., 619). PRH: Hence Bill Clinton killed our language by saying it depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is in a deposition about his relationship with a young woman.
“Can anything be more clear than that the metaphor, in such cases, lies not in the substantive verb, which is unchanging in its meaning, but in the noun?” If this is not so, then how does one know where “is” means “is like?” If the metaphor is in the noun, then you know when you hear Napoleon is Emperor that doesn’t mean “is like,” but when you hear Napoleon is a fox it does mean “is like”? You know not because of the word ‘is’ but because of the word “fox” (694).
“The ‘is’ is just as literal in a metaphor as is the plainest and most prosaic sentence. Those who deny this show that they do not see the real point” (Ibid.).
In theological “war” as in the real thing, you must not surrender key positions. Perhaps this is why Luther famously wrote on the table underneath the tablecloth he and his opponents were sitting at. While they were denying, sidestepping, qualifying the Real Presence, every now and again Luther would lift the cloth to look at the words he had written there to bring him back to the key position. The words were not not what he thought but what God said: “This is My body.”
