Against a Merely Spiritual Understanding of Christ's Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar

"Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.

And Thomas answered and said unto him, My LORD and my God.

Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." -John 20:27-29 KJV

It seems strange to me that Thomas expresses his faith in Christ's divinity at this moment. No, he doesn't make the acclamation, "My Lord and My God" at the transfiguration nor at our savior's baptism where the Holy Spirit descends in the form of a dove and the Father's voice is heard. He doesn't make this exclamation after a blinding vision of Christ such as Saint Paul's or when he saw him ascend to the right hand of the Father.

"Doubting" Thomas returns to faith when he touches Christ's flesh.

Not enough can be said about this, but let us remember that this same flesh and blood which Thomas touches we are given, take, and receive in the Lord's Supper. Christ does not say, "This is my spirit." He does not say to us, "Now go up to heaven through faith so that you may imagine my body." He says,

THIS IS MY BODY... THIS IS MY BLOOD... Take eat... Drink ye all of it...

When we hold Christ's body in our hand, or it lays on our tongue, when our teeth press upon it, and when we drink of his blood we too with Thomas may declare, "My Lord and my God." In doing this we are those blessed who have faith without seeing, but let us not fall into the error of ascribing something we cannot see to the merely "spiritual" sphere.

"There exists both a bond of love and an attraction of love between God and us. It is true that God is the Self-sufficient and Self-blessed, needing none other for His happiness and perfection; but it is His love which so draws Him down to us, that He inclines towards us, and imparts Himself to us. He whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain, has chosen us for the habitation in which His love is to dwell. And in proportion as we departed from Him by sin, did His grace follow and draw near to us, till it sunk into our very flesh and blood." -Christoph Luthardt's Apologetic Lectures on the Saving Truths of Christianity, page 25

It is through our faith in God's humanity that we are saved. Nothing is more divine in Christ than his flesh and blood. He has not redeemed us by the sacrifice of his spirit, or at least this is not the focal point of God's revelation of our redemption. By the stripes on his flesh we are healed. By the shedding of his blood we are saved. By the eating of his flesh and drinking of his blood we have life within us, yet these words are Spirit and Truth and not of the flesh. Christ Jesus was not of the flesh, yet he has became flesh for us.

"But how are we to conceive of the reality of the God-man? And shall we ever attain the power of forming a conception thereof? It is a necessity to faith to strive after knowledge; but let us not forget that it is not our knowledge which believes, but our faith which knows. Who has ever really known God ? Would we wait to believe in Him until we comprehend Him ? Are we not, without this, directly conscious of His existence ? Our convictions do not arise solely from the reasonings of our minds; and this is the case here also. No one has ever fully understood the nature of God; no one has ever fully known the nature of man. What then ? If, when we think of God and man, much as we may reflect, there still remain enigmas, shall we be surprised if, when we think of the God-man, all enigmas are not solved ? He would not be as He is, the most wondrous phenomenon on earth, if there were nothing mysterious to us in Him." -Luthardt

Let us not be shy with our speech to others regarding his true body and blood in the Holy Supper. We should proclaim this boldly and without hesitation or ambiguity. Christ himself did not shrink from this proclamation, but let us remember that even when these things were spoken by the incarnate word himself, "many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him."