![]() There are no men, not even in Italy and France, whom I would like to see more than you.” Luther responds, “Ask God that you may be enlightened.” At this Oecolampadius says to Luther, “You, too, should ask for that. Oecolampadius then asks “for God’s sake that the poor church should be taken into consideration.” Zwingli then asks Luther to forgive his bitterness and, “almost weeping,” says that “It has always been my eager wish to have you as a friend, and I still ask for that. He asks that his own bitter words, if he, yielding to his own flesh and blood, had spoken such, might be forgiven. ![]() He also thanks Zwingli although he had spoken in a more bitter way. Luther then thanks Oecolampadius for having made plain his views in a friendly manner and without bitterness. Luther: I commend you to God and his judgment. Note: sources disagree on who said this): We can neither comprehend nor believe that the body of Christ is there. Luther: I do not know of any other means but to give due honor to the Word of God and to believe with us. As the discussion escalates, a politician in attendance named Feige exhorts both sides to “seek means and ways of coming to an agreement.” That triggers the key moment in the colloquy: The two sides then go back and forth, arguing both over the scriptural texts and their readings of Augustine. ![]() Luther says “I do not know of any doctor of the church who would create agreement among us,” because all the doctors agree that God can exist outside of space and, as he sees it, that is the primary point of contention. He grants that Augustine and Fulgentius are on the reformed’s side, but that all the other fathers are against them. Luther responds that the Reformed are now arguing from the fathers because they cannot prove their teaching from scripture. Now I ask in all sincerity: How, then, can there be a body?” (He reads from Fulgentius and Augustine.) When they return, Oecolampadius resumes: You have admitted that the body of Christ is not in the Sacrament as in a place. In the Sacrament the body is not as in a place.” Oecolampadius then tries to pin Luther by arguing that, “Then the body of Christ is not really in the Sacrament, somatikios, bodily, that is, with a true body.Īt that, they break. In arguing over Augustine, the Reformed provoke Brenz to say that the body “is without place.” Zwingli then replies: “The body of Christ must be in one place if it were not in a place, it would not be a body.”Īt this, Luther says, “‘It must be in one place,’-this word of Augustine does not speak of the Lord’s Supper. Luther responds by saying that the passages Zwingli is citing are not dealing with the question of the Lord’s Supper, but with other historical debates, most principally with Manichaeism. “Prove, I pray, that the body of Christ can be in many places.” Luther responds, “This is my body.”įrom here, Zwingli pivots and begins to argue from the fathers, citing Augustine and Fulgentius. Zwingli responds by telling Luther he can’t take refuge with the schoolmen (scholastics). Therefore the world does not have a place where it exists. Who am I to measure the power of God? He maintains the largest organism existing, the universe, without space. They say that God can do the same with all bodies, let alone with the body of Christ. The schoolmen have held that one body can be in many places, or many bodies in one place, or that a body can be in no place at all. What space is is taught by the mathematics. God can even cause my body not to be in space. Luther: I have told you already, the body of Christ may be in space, and it may not be in space. Zwingli: The words morphe and schema indicate that the body of Christ must occupy a certain space and must exist locally. This is literally the first interaction we have recorded from the third day of the colloquy: If you’ve read the notes from day two, then you already know how day three began: Zwingli kept arguing that Christ’s body cannot be in multiple places at once. ![]() And that realization was devastating for several attendees. But once the attendees had a bit of time they all realized the magnitude of what was happening: As long as Luther was preeminent amongst the Lutherans, there would be no possible reconciliation between Reformed and Lutheran. Once it became clear that no agreement would be possible, discussions first became more testy. On the third, those official discussions continued. The first day featured informal discussions with a small group and was followed by more official (and similarly fruitless) discussions on October 2. The third day of the Marburg Colloquy is the day that the wheels basically came off the cart.
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