Diatheke

Bunnie has referred us to another good one which she found over at Confessing Evangelical. It's an account of how considering the Lord's Supper in the light of Scripture turned a Presbyterian into a Lutheran.

A few years ago a decent version of the New Testament called the New Evangelical Translation (the rights to which where tragically sold to World Publishing, which turned it into the dumbed-down, inaccurate, and at some points heretical abomination ironically called God's Word) came along. Among its notes was a dissertation on the whys and wherefores of its seemingly idiosyncratic translation of the word diatheke (usually rendered "covenant," or, better, "testament" in the Words of Institution) as "last will and testament." It made a convincing case that the Sacrament is a particular kind of covenant which has specific biblical roots and significance, and that a full understanding of Christ's words required that translation.

Essentially, as this article shows, this was the same argument Martin Chemnitz made long ago in defense of the Lutheran understanding of what the Sacrament is all about against the Reformed.

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