Grace And Sign

This thesis attempts to study the theological foundation of the change of the eucharist’s role in Christian religion base on Luther’s eucharistic theology. Most of Luther’s texts on the eucharist are controversial. His eucharistic theology is divided into two stages according to the debate opponents —with the Roman Catholic church and Zwingli the Swiss reformer.Luther inherited Augustine’s definition of the sacrament that the sacrament should have two elements -- the Word of God and a visible sign. According to the bible Luther criticized the dislocation of the priest, the practice of the mass as sacrifice and the official explanation "transubstantiation". Luther’s thought in this section gained support of the other reformers and also directly changed the life of the Christian. As the reformers’ sacramental theology became divergent, Luther’s view that the bread and the wine under which Christ’s flesh and blood are truly present became the center of the controversy. Influenced by the humanism, Zwingli insisted that "is" means "to signify" not "to be" when Jesus Christ said "this is my body" to established the eucharist. To Zwingli, holding the eucharist should be regarded to be a memorial to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The debate between Luther and Zwingli fo-cused on understanding of the bible, Christology, salvation, and the relationship of reason and mystery in the faith.Luther was the first one to question the sacramental theology of Roman Catholic church as well as the one who was closest to the doctrine of the Roman Catholic church compared with other reformers. The different approaches of different reformers in the reformation to the re-form of the sacrament and their various attitude to the Roman Catholic church manifests their attitudes to humanism and secularization. To a certain extent we can detect why contempo-rary Christian faith have different positions on the eucharist.