LUTHER 1527 Generation

LUTHER 1527

Who would have expected such lofty wisdom from the fanatics? Here you see the best single argument that they have. Suppose now that I ask them whether they have learned this from the Scriptures, and can prove that these two scriptural passages, viz. that Christ is seated in heaven and that his body is in the Supper, are contradictory; or again, that the flesh is of no avail and that Christ’s body is eaten in the Supper; and, where all this is supposed to be written. They will answer me, “You must love us along with the Scriptures; you must believe us. We are certain of it without Scripture, and more certain than if the Scriptures said it.”
I reply: How is this? Oh, you fool, open your eyes! Don’t you see that heaven, where Christ is seated in his glory, is high above, and the earth where his Supper is observed is here, far below? How can a body be seated so high in glory and at the same time be here below, allowing itself to be profaned and taken by hands, mouth, and belly, as if it were a fried sausage? Would this be consistent with the majesty of God and the glory of heaven? Ah, this is more than certain! 


Generation

The necessity thus asserted of the eternal generation does not, however, impair its freedom, but is intended only to deny its being arbitrary and accidental, and to secure its foundation in the essence of God himself. God, to be Father, must from eternity beget the Son, and so reproduce himself; yet he does this in obedience not to a foreign law, but to his own law and the impulse of his will. Athanasius, it is true, asserts on the one hand that God begets the Son not of his will, but by his nature, yet on the other hand he does not admit that God begets the Son without will, or of force or unconscious necessity. The generation, therefore, rightly understood, is an act at once of essence and of will. Augustine calls the Son “will of will.” In God freedom and necessity coincide.
The mode of the divine generation is and must be a mystery. Of course all human representations of it must be avoided, and the matter be conceived in a purely moral and spiritual way. The eternal generation, conceived as an intellectual process, is the eternal self-knowledge of God; reduced to ethical terms, it is his eternal and absolute love in its motion and working within himself.
HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH Schaff Volume 3 NICENE AND POST-NICENE CHRISTIANTY A.D. 311-600
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