Reformation

Abstract

Discontent with the medieval services was widespread, if not universal. The renewal of scholarship in the Renaissance and the rediscovery of the Bible produced the attitude of mind which went by the name of ‘the New Learning’, a title slightly misleading to modern ears, for which ‘the New Teaching’ would more accurately convey the sense. A contemporary summed up the differences between the Old and the New Learnings at the crucial point of eucharistic doctrine as follows. According to the Old, the Mass is a sacrifice for the living and the dead, and ‘oblation is made in the person of the whole Church’. For the New, the Supper is a memorial only of Christ’s death, ‘and not a sacrifice, but a remembrance of the sacrifice that was once offered upon the cross’; and ‘all oblations except that of our Lord are vain and void’.¹ Luther’s first application of this teaching to the Mass was made in his sermons,² in which he directed his fire against the denial of the chalice to the laity, the doctrine of transubstantiation, and, above all, the whole concept of offering and sacrifice, whether expressed in actions or words, which flatly contradicted the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Most of the offensive passages occurred in the Canon, and this was the main point of attack.

Next comes all that abomination known as the Offertory, to which all the foregoing part of the Mass is compelled to be subservient. From this point onwards practically everything speaks and smells of oblation. In the midst of it all are placed the words of life and salvation, just like the ark of the Lord of old in the idols’ temple, next to Dagon.…

So then, let us repudiate all those things that speak of oblation, together with the whole of the Canon, and keep what is pure and holy; and thus let us order our Mass.

Luther, Formula Missae et Communionis, 1523