Theology and Church. Karl Barth
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generous with his goods to thee, and he comes to thee with the purpose of giving thee his goods.’1 And further, ‘if the man realizes that he is not offering an empty, hungry and thirsty soul to God, and that he does not go the sacrament with a sufficient faith, and moreover, that he cannot do such a thing rightly (as every man in truth will realize, if he will examine and understand himself), then that man must not be ashamed nor afraid to pray according to Luke 17:5; Mark 9:42’.2
The right ‘preparation’ is therefore just the painful recognition that we lack the right ‘fitness’. This recognition, the faith which so to speak leaps into the very gap where there is no faith, is the faith which receives the gift, because that faith is directed towards the Giver. If the Devil ‘winks’ at thee to tell thee that thou art unworthy of the sacrament, ‘just cross thyself and cease worrying over worthiness and unworthiness; only take heed that thou believest.… Faith makes worthy; doubt makes unworthy.’3
‘The sacrament is given only to those who need comfort and strength, who have a timid heart, who carry a frightened conscience, who suffer from the assault of sins or have fallen under it. What can it do for the free, confident spirits who neither need nor desire it?’4 ‘This is what Paul also means when he says, let every man examine himself and then eat of this bread. For the man who rightly examines himself, who forgets the wickedness of other men and does not judge them, but who knows concerning himself that he labours and is heavy laden with many sins and transgressions, will then be greedy for the grace and help of Christ. For as St Augustine says, “the food seeks none except a hungry and empty soul; it flees none but the full and proud who judge and condemn one another, as those would do of whom the Apostle wrote these words.” For if by these words the apostle had required of us that we should examine ourselves until we were certain that we were without deadly sin, he would have laid upon us an impossible requirement and wholly deprived us of the holy sacrament. Therefore it is enough, if thou dost not know of a deadly sin of a specific, gross kind, or of a certain intention to commit a deadly sin. Leave what may lie in the background to the grace of God and let thy faith be thy cleanness; then thou art sure.’1 The sacrament will be received by those ‘who know their transgression, who feel that they are not good and yet would gladly become good. Therefore it all depends on so feeling (on knowing one’s self to have sinned), for in truth all of us transgress and are sinners; but not all so confess.’2
The ‘fitness’ (dispositio) achieved by such ‘preparation’ is therefore the ‘becoming another man’ which must precede the use of the sacrament (not first follow it) in order that the believer may receive in it the ‘testament’, the effective promise of the forgiveness of sins. This capacity (capacitas) can only be compared to an empty, outstretched hand. That it shall not be unused is provided for by word and sign. There is needed only the third component, man’s concurring affirmation that ‘as the words of Christ declare, so it is in truth’. (‘For where God speaks and reveals, there man must believe with a wholly firm heart that the truth is as he speaks and reveals; so that we do not hold him to be a liar and a juggler, but to be faithful and true.’)3
So these three components are interwoven: (1) The ‘fitness’ of man (negative), the recognition of a lack; (2) the truth of God’s promise, offered in Word and sign; (3) the impossibility, recognized by man, that God could lie, the faith, which is counted by God ‘as a fundamental, sufficient piety for blessedness’,4 the faith which receives the sacrament. The essential one of the three is unquestionably for Luther the second—neither the negative fitness nor the positive effect which are on man’s side, but the divine promise. ‘For where the Word of God who promises is, there is of necessity the faith of the man who accepts. Therefore it is clear that the beginning of our salvation is faith which depends on the Word of God who promises, who comes to us, in his free and undeserved mercy, without any effort of ours, and offers the Word of his promise.… The Word of God is first of all; faith follows it and charity follows faith.’5
But this does not exclude, on the contrary it includes as corollary that the third point (believing God to be true) involves a most direct and immediate claim upon men. And it is upon that claim that Luther in this connexion will enlarge particularly. Not as if faith were again to become a kind of work—a most inward, most refined human act of conscience, penitence, and obedience. Certainly not! ‘Be thy remorse and thy true or false(!) penitence what it will, attend most earnestly to this, that thou go to the sacrament trusting in the Word of Christ our Beloved Lord, which is there repeated. For if thou so goest, thou wilt be illuminated and thy countenance will not fall nor be ashamed. Thou canst not possibly in any way succeed in making the blessed mother of God a liar; and she said (Luke 1:53), the Lord has filled the hungry with good things.…’1 But just this ‘therefore so go’ (in view of the questionable character of even our most sincere wanting and desiring) makes a requirement of men, without which the sacrament, or even God himself can effect ‘nothing at all’. It asserts a claim upon men as certainly as the promise announced in the sacrament is its prerequisite.
There is also another thing (not really a different thing) which must be added. ‘Christ does not say to us, see, there it is, there it lies; but he says, take, it is to be thine. It is therefore not consistent with the nature of the sacrament that we should keep it lying there for we must use it. Now there is no other right use except that thou believest that this body was given for thee and this blood shed for thee. So thou hast it as thou believest.’2 And already before 1520 he wrote: ‘How does it help that thou picturest to thyself and believest that death, sin, hell are overcome in Christ for others, if thou dost not also believe that thy death, thy sin, thy hell are overcome for thee and destroyed and that therefore thou art redeemed? The sacrament indeed would be worth nothing if thou dost not believe the very thing which is there revealed, given and promised to thee.’3 But even a year earlier Luther had thought it necessary to counteract this stress on the second person singular and offer the following assurance: ‘If thou art still weak in faith (and that nullifies all other “preparation”),4 learn that last remedy of the weak and allow thyself to be nourished like an infant in the arms and bosom of mother Church, yes on the bed of the paralytic, that the Lord may at least see their faith when there is none of thine; that thou mayest approach in the faith either of the universal Church or of a believing man known to thee and mayest say boldly to the Lord Jesus, Behold me, Lord Jesus Christ; I grieve that I am so weak that I believe not at all, or so little, in thine inestimable love toward us. Accept me therefore in the faith of thy Church and of this or that man. For however it be with me, it is required, O Lord, that I obey thy Church which orders me to come. In obedience at least I come, if I bring nothing else. Then believe firmly that thou dost not come unworthily. There is no doubt that he will accept obedience given to the Church as to himself. Then it cannot be that the faith of the Church will permit thee to perish any more than the babe who is rightly baptized and saved by the faith of others.’1
This last idea, like that cited on the opus operantis (‘work of doing’)2 was for obvious reasons not offered in this form later. From 1520 on, we find the bluntest antithesis: ‘Thou canst not depend on the faith of another when thou approachest the sacrament. Each one must believe for himself, as each one is also required to fight for himself against sin, Satan and the world.’3 The question remains whether this antithesis is more than dialectic, whether it is wholly dropped or whether here ‘an obvious remnant of the Catholic point of view’4 is still to be found. In 1519 Luther writes: ‘Whether I be worthy or not, I am a member of Christianity.’5 And against the vehement ‘each one for himself’ stands all which he said later of the character of the Lord’s Supper as ‘communion’.6 Not to the individual as such, but to Christianity, to the Church, the properly instituted sacrament was intrusted. This is for Luther axiomatic.7
The requirement of personal faith and the reliance on the faith of the Church are correlatives, not mutually exclusive antitheses. A final undialectic word on true faith is to be found when Luther writes: ‘See to it that thou dost not make for thyself a false faith when thou merely believest that Christ is there given thee and is thine. If thy faith is only a human idea which thou hast set up, remain away from this sacrament. For the faith must be a faith which God creates; thou must know and feel that God has wrought such a faith in thee that thou