Where Is This Written? How Michael Müller Rewrites the Last Supper Into the Mass
There comes a point in Michael Müller’s The Holy Mass *Chapter IX when the issue can no longer be reduced to a disagreement between Roman Catholic and non-Catholic interpretations of the Eucharist. In his chapter on “The Sacrifice of the New Law,” a more fundamental problem repeatedly presents itself: Müller describes events, words, intentions and ceremonies as though they belonged to the biblical narrative when the inspired writers never record them. He begins with genuine passages of Scripture, but interpretation gradually becomes narration; theological inference becomes historical fact; later liturgical customs are carried backwards into the upper room; ecclesiastical doctrines developed centuries later are placed into the mouths of Christ and the apostles; apocryphal stories are introduced with the authority of apostolic history; and eventually even unverifiable visions and miracle stories are supported by words of Christ spoken in an entirely different biblical context.
The result is a narrative in which Scripture and tradition become so closely interwoven that a reader who does not continually compare Müller with the biblical text could easily cease to recognise where one ends and the other begins.
If Müller had simply said that later Catholic theology came to understand the Last Supper in a particular sacrificial way, his reader would at least know what kind of claim was being made. A fourth-century interpretation could then be examined as a fourth-century interpretation, the Council of Trent could be read as a sixteenth-century doctrinal definition, and a medieval saint’s vision could be evaluated as a devotional tradition. Instead, Müller repeatedly moves between these completely different categories without adequately marking the transition. At his most extreme, he reports an internal prayer supposedly offered silently by Jesus, describes precisely what Jesus was thinking, explains invisible sacramental events no apostle records, and then writes an extended speech in the first person telling the apostles to “make” Christ’s body and blood and continually present Him sacrificially to heaven. None of those words appears in the Gospel accounts.
The question which must therefore govern the entire investigation is not whether Müller sounds devout, whether later theologians agreed with him, or whether centuries of Catholic practice can be marshalled behind his conclusions. The question is much simpler and much more demanding: where is this actually written in Scripture?
Constructing a continuing sacrifice from a sacrifice Scripture calls complete
Müller begins his argument before the Mosaic sacrificial system has even been established. He writes, “After our first parents had repented of their sin, God like a good father forgave them, and promised to send a Redeemer who should destroy sin and restore man to his lost inheritance.” Genesis certainly records the Fall, God’s judgment, the promise concerning the seed of the woman, the clothing of Adam and Eve, and their expulsion from Eden. Christians have long recognised Genesis 3:15 as a foundational promise ultimately fulfilled in Christ. What Genesis does not do is narrate Adam and Eve repenting and then explicitly tell us that God forgave them. Müller may infer repentance and forgiveness, but an inference should be identified as such. Instead, it is written as though Genesis itself had reported the event.
The same method appears immediately afterwards when Müller states that “God instituted bloody sacrifice.” Genesis 4 tells us that Cain brought “of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD” and Abel brought “of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof,” but Scripture does not first give us the scene Müller assumes in which God formally institutes bloody sacrifice for Adam and his descendants after the Fall. Müller then builds upon this unrecorded institution with an even more absolute statement: “The sacrifice of corn and wine and the like, is a sacrifice which an innocent sinless creature might offer to his Creator, but a bloody sacrifice is the only befitting offering of a sinful creature to his offended God.”
The difficulty is that the law God actually gave does not permit such an absolute distinction.
Leviticus certainly emphasises blood and declares that God gave blood upon the altar “to make an atonement for your souls” because “the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:11). Yet Leviticus 5 explicitly provides for a poor sinner who cannot afford the prescribed birds to bring fine flour “for a sin offering.” The priest makes atonement concerning the sin, and the text concludes that “it shall be forgiven him.” This does not make blood insignificant, nor does it undermine the typological importance of blood in Scripture. It does, however, contradict Müller’s universal statement that a bloody sacrifice is “the only befitting offering of a sinful creature.” God Himself provided a non-bloody offering for a sinner and called it a sin offering.
Müller then says that the slain victim “represented the sinner himself” and that by offering it the sinner “publicly acknowledged that by his sins he deserved death, and that, were God to treat him with strict justice, he should even suffer eternally.” There is theological reasoning here that may be developed from the concept of substitution, but Müller again writes with a certainty greater than the text provides. Where does Moses say that every Israelite bringing such an offering was publicly declaring that he personally deserved eternal suffering? That is Müller’s theological explanation of the sacrifice, not a statement found in the law itself.
He is on firmer biblical ground when he says that the sacrifices of the Old Law were temporary and pointed beyond themselves. Hebrews itself teaches that the law contained shadows rather than the final reality and that the continual repetition of sacrifices demonstrated their inability to perfect the worshipper. But it is at exactly this point that Müller makes the leap upon which the rest of his argument depends. He writes: “Our divine Saviour came on earth not to destroy the law of Sacrifice, but to fulfill it, to make it perfect; whatever was essential in the Old Law, in the Jewish religion, remained essential also in the New Law, the Christian religion. Sacrifice, then, which was the very essence of the Jewish religion, remained also the essence of the Christian religion.”
The difficulty is not that Christianity has no sacrifice. Christianity rests entirely upon a sacrifice: the one sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The question is whether the New Testament teaches that the repeated earthly sacrificial system itself continues in a perfected form, with Christian priests repeatedly offering the same victim. Hebrews repeatedly develops the argument in a different direction. Christ “needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice,” because “this he did once, when he offered up himself” (Hebrews 7:27). He entered “once into the holy place” by His own blood, “having obtained eternal redemption for us” (Hebrews 9:12). He does not “offer himself often,” because “Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many” (Hebrews 9:25, 28). Believers are sanctified “through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:10).
Under the former system, “every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.” Christ, however, “after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God.” By “one offering” He “hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified,” and the argument concludes: “Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin” (Hebrews 10:11–18). The old priest stands because the work continues; Christ offers Himself and sits because His sacrificial work has achieved what the repeated sacrifices could never achieve.
That makes Müller’s use of Hebrews particularly troubling. He introduces Hebrews 10 by saying, “As St. Paul assures us in his epistle to the Hebrews,” and then quotes: “Wherefore when he entered the world, thou wouldst not have sacrifice and oblation, but thou hast fitted a body to me. The sacrifice of propitiation for sins is no longer pleasing to thee.” But that is not the KJV wording. Hebrews 10:5–6 says, “Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure.” Müller has inserted both the term “propitiation” and the temporal idea “no longer pleasing.” More importantly, he has lifted the passage away from the argument that immediately follows: Christ takes away the first to establish the second; His body is offered once for all; He offers one sacrifice for sins for ever; and where remission has been accomplished there is no more offering for sin.
The contradiction becomes sharper when statements from elsewhere in Müller’s own book are placed alongside Hebrews. Müller reasons that because Jesus Christ is “a priest forever,” “therefore He must offer sacrifice forever.” He elsewhere says that Christ “perpetually repeats and uninterruptedly continues His atoning and redeeming acts.” The writer of Hebrews reasons differently. Christ’s priesthood is permanent because He “continueth ever,” and because “he ever liveth to make intercession” for those who come to God through Him (Hebrews 7:24–25). Within that same discussion of His eternal priesthood, Hebrews insists that Christ “needeth not daily” to offer because “this he did once, when he offered up himself.” Müller reasons that an eternal priest must continually offer sacrifice; Hebrews describes an eternal priest whose continuing heavenly activity is intercession precisely after the once-for-all self-offering has been accomplished.
Müller’s treatment of Melchizedek attempts to supply the biblical model for his continuing bread-and-wine priesthood. He writes that before Christ there were “two distinct classes of the priesthood,” Aaron, “who offered the blood of animals,” and Melchizedek, “who offered bread and wine.” Genesis does not say that. Genesis 14:18 says, “And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God.” He brought forth bread and wine and blessed Abram. There is no stated altar, no oblation, no libation, no immolation and no sentence saying that the bread and wine were his priestly sacrifice. Müller has changed “brought forth” into “offered.”
The omission becomes more significant in Hebrews 7, because the inspired writer devotes an extended argument to the meaning of Melchizedek. Hebrews discusses his name, kingship, priesthood, blessing of Abraham, reception of tithes, lack of recorded genealogy and typological likeness to the Son of God. Yet the chapter never bases Christ’s priesthood upon an alleged sacrifice of bread and wine. If the bread and wine are the essential key to understanding the Eucharistic priesthood according to Melchizedek, why does the inspired exposition of Melchizedek’s significance not use them? The point becomes stronger still when Müller says that Christ “offered up bread and wine at the Last Supper according to the rite of Melchisedech” and then “offered up Himself in a bloody manner” according to Aaron. Hebrews does not describe Christ’s death as an Aaronic rite. Christ is from Judah, not Levi (Hebrews 7:14), and Hebrews 8:4 even observes that if He were on earth He would not be a priest under the existing earthly order. Christ fulfils the sacrificial types, but Müller’s neat construction of two continuing priestly classes and two corresponding rites is not the argument Hebrews actually makes.
The same tendency appears in his handling of Isaiah. Müller writes, “Of those of My people that shall be saved, — i.e. the Apostles — ‘I shall send some to the heathens, and I will take men from the heathens and make them priests and Levites.’” The words “i.e. the Apostles” are Müller’s addition, not Isaiah’s. Isaiah 66 speaks of “those that escape” being sent to the nations, the gathering of Israel’s brethren, and God taking “of them for priests and for Levites.” Whatever interpretation one finally adopts, Müller has inserted his identification directly into the explanation as though the prophetic text itself supplied it.
Malachi then becomes the supposed prophecy of the worldwide Mass. Müller quotes God rejecting the corrupted offerings of Israel and declaring that from the rising of the sun to its setting His name will be great among the Gentiles and “in every place” a “clean oblation” will be offered. Müller concludes that the Jewish sacrifices would cease and another sacrifice would take their place, and then declares that the prophecy has been “literally fulfilled” because the Catholic sacrifice of Christ’s body and blood is offered across the world “at every hour of the day and every part of the night.” Malachi 1:11 undeniably speaks of God’s name being great among the Gentiles and of a pure offering, and an early Christian Eucharistic interpretation of the verse certainly exists. What the verse itself does not say is “Mass,” “transubstantiation,” “Roman priesthood,” “unbloody immolation of Christ,” “Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity,” or “successors of the apostles continually offering the victim of Calvary.” Müller has read the later Catholic sacrificial system into “pure offering” and then treated the existence of that system as proof that his interpretation is the prophecy’s literal fulfilment.
This matters because the New Testament itself tells Christians what sacrifices continue after Calvary. Peter calls the believing people “an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5). Paul urges believers to “present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God” (Romans 12:1). Hebrews, after its sustained argument concerning the finality of Christ’s offering, says that Jesus “suffered without the gate” and therefore commands, “Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.” The direction is significant: Christ goes outside the old camp, and believers are told to go out to Him. Hebrews then explicitly identifies the continuing sacrifices of Christian life: “By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name,” followed immediately by, “But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased” (Hebrews 13:12–16).
The New Testament therefore does not leave Christians without sacrifice. It identifies Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice as the foundation and then speaks of spiritual sacrifices, living sacrifice, praise, thanksgiving, generosity and doing good. That is particularly important because Müller’s argument moves in precisely the opposite direction. After Christ suffers outside the gate, Müller effectively brings believers back to another continuing earthly altar at which Christ Himself must repeatedly be sacramentally offered.
Rewriting the Last Supper into a ceremony the evangelists never recorded
The most extraordinary section of Müller’s chapter begins when he moves from theological argument to a detailed reconstruction of the Last Supper. He writes: “When seated at the table and surrounded by His Apostles, He asked first for unleavened bread, which He laid upon a plate, then for pure wine, which, mingled with a small quantity of water, He poured into the chalice.” The Passover context makes unleavened bread entirely reasonable, but the remaining details immediately require a source. Matthew records Jesus taking bread, blessing and breaking it, and giving it to the disciples; He then takes the cup and gives thanks. Mark records the same essential actions. Luke records the bread, thanksgiving, breaking and giving, followed by the cup after supper. Paul repeats the received tradition of bread and cup in 1 Corinthians 11. None of them tells us that Jesus first requested bread, laid it on a plate, requested “pure wine,” added “a small quantity of water,” or poured it into a vessel described as a liturgical chalice.
The mixed water is particularly instructive because later evidence allows us to see where such a practice certainly existed. Justin Martyr, writing in the second century, describes Christians bringing bread and wine mixed with water to the presiding minister. Justin therefore provides genuine historical evidence that mixed wine and water formed part of Christian Eucharistic practice in his period. What Justin does not say is that Jesus performed this action at the Last Supper. A second-century practice may represent an inherited custom, an adaptation or a liturgical development, but it cannot simply be inserted into a first-century Gospel scene and then narrated as though Matthew or Luke recorded it.
Müller then passes from unrecorded external actions into the unrecorded interior thoughts of Jesus: “After praying for a long time, He took the bread into His hands, and offered a prayer internally to the Eternal Father, begging that, in virtue of the words He was about to pronounce, the Sacrament He was going to institute might be perpetuated in His church throughout all ages.” This is one of the clearest examples of the problem. No evangelist says that Jesus “prayed for a long time” at this point. No evangelist records such a silent internal prayer. No apostle reports that Jesus inwardly begged the Father to perpetuate the sacrament throughout all ages. Müller is not interpreting a recorded prayer; he is supplying a prayer that Scripture never records and then describing its contents as though he somehow has access to the unspoken thoughts of Christ.
The reconstruction continues: “With great majesty He raised His eyes towards heaven, that is towards the two divine persons.” Again, this is not reported in the Last Supper narratives. The issue is not Trinitarian belief; the issue is historical testimony. Müller supplies the bodily gesture, its solemnity, its direction and its theological intention. He then tells the reader that Jesus “pronounced over the bread and wine the words of consecration, by which they were changed into the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of our divine Redeemer.” The Gospels certainly record Christ’s words concerning His body and blood. They do not add Müller’s explanatory sentence that the elements were thereby changed into “Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity,” nor do they use the later technical expression “words of consecration.” That is developed Catholic sacramental theology written into the narrative.
Müller immediately adds, “The body of Jesus Christ was then in the host and His blood in the chalice.” Again, neither “host” nor the liturgical meaning of “chalice” belongs to the Gospel wording. He proceeds to explain that because the chalice is consecrated after the host, the separation constitutes “a lively representation of the effusion of the blood of Jesus Christ upon the cross, and His death or the separation of His soul and body.” But no apostle explains the sequence of bread and cup in this way. The order of the narrative has been transformed into a theory of mystical sacrificial separation.
The account becomes still more elaborate when Müller says, “Our Lord then deposited the holy Victim upon the table, placing it there in the state of a sacrifice, and offering it to His Father in a mystic and unbloody manner.” Not one Gospel says that Jesus “deposited the holy Victim,” placed Himself sacramentally “in the state of a sacrifice,” or offered the consecrated elements to the Father in a separate unbloody sacrificial action. These propositions do not arise because the Gospel gives additional details that Müller merely explains; they arise because later sacrificial theology requires the Last Supper itself already to constitute an offering of Christ.
That requirement produces perhaps the strangest expression in the entire chapter. Müller says that, “To complete the sacrifice by a kind of mystic death, — the loss of His sacramental life — He partook of it Himself.” Christ therefore supposedly undergoes “a kind of mystic death” and loses “His sacramental life.” This raises both a textual and a logical problem. Where does Christ teach such a category of life? Where does Paul explain that a Eucharistic sacrifice is completed when Christ loses His sacramental life? Where does Hebrews distinguish the physical death at Calvary from another mystical sacrificial death required before or within Communion? The New Testament repeatedly describes Christ’s offering with the language of once-for-all accomplishment; Müller requires an additional category of sacrificial death precisely because his system needs the Last Supper already to contain an immolation while Christ remains physically alive.
The difficulty becomes clearer when Gregory of Nyssa, whom Müller later quotes approvingly, is allowed to explain the same idea in fourth-century language. Gregory reasons that when Christ gave His body to the disciples to be eaten, the body must already have been “sacrificed ineffably and invisibly,” since in the ordinary order a sacrificial victim is slain before it is eaten. Gregory’s reasoning is historically important because it reveals the pressure produced by the sacrificial interpretation: Jesus is visibly alive at the Supper, continues speaking, goes to Gethsemane, prays, is arrested, tried and only afterwards physically dies. To call the Supper itself the sacrificial immolation therefore requires another invisible category of sacrificial death before the death the Gospels actually record. Müller’s “kind of mystic death” and “loss of His sacramental life” are another expression of the same theological necessity. Yet no apostle tells us that such a second category exists.
Müller then uses Christ’s command to the apostles to construct an ordination ceremony. He says the command to partake was “an imperative injunction” which simultaneously “conferred upon them the sacerdotal dignity required for the due discharge of such an ordinance.” He then adds that “They began to exercise this sacerdotal dignity at the moment they communicated each other at the command of our Lord.” Neither statement is found in the Gospel accounts. Jesus gives the bread and cup to His disciples. The evangelists do not say, “By this command He ordained them sacrificing priests,” and they do not record the apostles “communicating each other” as newly ordained sacerdotal ministers. Müller has converted a later theology of Holy Orders into a historical event taking place inside the upper room.
From those additions he concludes, “And thus was Mass, the sacrifice of the New Law, that is, its essential parts, — consecration and communion, — instituted by our holy Redeemer.” The problem is that the conclusion has been constructed largely out of the unrecorded details Müller himself has supplied: a plate, mixed water, a chalice, a prolonged prayer, an internal prayer, a sacramental transformation described in later technical language, a mystical separation of body and blood, an unbloody offering, a mystic death, a loss of sacramental life and the ordination of the apostles.
Müller then attempts to show that Communion must complete this sacrifice by analogy with the Old Testament holocaust. He writes that because the holocaust was not merely slain but entirely consumed upon the altar, “Therefore it was necessary in this perfect sacrifice of the New Law, which includes every perfection of former sacrifices, that there should be a similar consummation, which is nowhere found but in the Communion.” The crucial phrase is “therefore it was necessary.” Necessary according to which New Testament writer? No apostle argues that because a burnt offering was consumed, the Eucharistic sacrifice must contain an analogous sacramental consumption in order to be complete. Müller has constructed a typological analogy and then converted the result into theological necessity.
His next sentence inadvertently reveals the true category of the claim: “Hence, according to the best theologians of the church, the essence of this Eucharistic sacrifice…” That is precisely the distinction the reader needs. This is a conclusion reached by theologians. It may be defended or rejected as theology, but it cannot be reported as though an apostle had stated it. Müller nevertheless immediately returns from theological construction to categorical history and declares, “The first mass then that ever was celebrated on earth was offered up by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself at the Last Supper.”
Paul gives a much simpler explanation of what Christians do in the Supper: “For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come” (1 Corinthians 11:26). They eat, they drink, they remember and they proclaim the Lord’s death. Paul could have said that in doing so they repeatedly immolate Christ in an unbloody sacrificial manner through an ordained priesthood; he does not.
Nor does the language of communion in 1 Corinthians 10 prove a new immolation. Paul calls the cup “the communion of the blood of Christ” and the bread “the communion of the body of Christ,” then compares this with Israel, whose worshippers became “partakers of the altar” by eating from sacrificial peace offerings. But participation in an already offered sacrifice is not the same act as offering the victim again. An Israelite who ate from a sacrifice did not re-immolate the animal by eating it. Communion with the benefits and reality of Christ’s sacrifice therefore cannot, by itself, demonstrate that Christ is sacrificially offered again in the act of Communion.
The chapter then reaches what may be its most serious example of theological invention. Müller writes, “Our Saviour meant to be thus understood,” and proceeds to create a long first-person speech for Jesus. His reconstructed Christ says, in part, “As I took bread and brake, and gave to you, saying, this is My body; and really and substantially made it, by My heavenly power, what I said it was, My body…” The speech then becomes a direct command: “go do you take bread, and blessing it, make it My body; and taking wine, bless it, and make it My blood,” followed by the instruction to “continually present to heaven in an unbloody manner” the same sacrifice which would be visibly offered upon the cross.
Those words are not recorded in Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, and Paul does not preserve them in 1 Corinthians. This cannot fairly be described merely as paraphrase. A paraphrase restates what a speaker said; Müller has inserted the disputed theological propositions themselves. “Make it My body,” “make it My blood,” “continually present to heaven” and “the self-same sacrifice” are exactly the propositions that require biblical proof. They are made to appear as the explanation of Scripture only because Müller first announces that “Our Saviour meant to be thus understood” and then supplies the necessary words for Him. The doctrine is assumed, placed into Christ’s mouth, and then used to explain what Christ supposedly meant. One cannot prove that Jesus instituted a sacrificing priesthood by first writing the sacerdotal commission that the Gospel itself does not contain.
The same pattern reappears in Acts. Müller says that Luke informs us that while the apostles were ministering, “that is to say as they were sacrificing to the Lord,” the Holy Ghost commanded the separation of Saul and Barnabas. Acts 13:2 actually reads, “As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.” The underlying Greek verb can be used in religious service and can occur in priestly settings, but it has a broader meaning of service or ministry. Acts 13:2 says nothing about bread, wine, consecration, a Eucharistic altar, a sacrificial victim or the offering of Christ. The explanatory phrase “that is to say as they were sacrificing to the Lord” is Müller's addition. He then concludes, “The same sacrifice which the Evangelist distinguishes by the term ‘ministration,’ we Catholics, at the present day, call the ‘Mass.’” But Luke has not distinguished the activity as a Eucharistic sacrifice. Müller has supplied that identification and then treated it as though Luke had made it.
Later authorities are used to supply what the apostolic record does not say
Having reconstructed the Last Supper in sacrificial terms, Müller turns to later authorities to reinforce the reconstruction. Gregory of Nyssa is quoted saying that Christ “offered Himself an oblation and a sacrifice for us” and that this occurred when “He made His own body eatable, and His blood drinkable.” Gregory further reasons that the body given to the disciples “was already sacrificed ineffably and invisibly.” As already noted, this is important fourth-century theology, but it remains fourth-century theological reasoning. Gregory is not an eyewitness supplement to Matthew. His argument is valuable precisely because it shows how later theologians attempted to solve the problem created by treating the Last Supper as an actual sacrifice before Christ had physically died.
Müller nevertheless says that “At that very time the Apostles were empowered and commanded to celebrate Mass,” as though the conclusion had now become historical fact. He then adds further alleged apostolic evidence: “St. Matthew, the Apostle, as history informs us, was pierced with a lance, whilst celebrating the holy sacrifice of the Mass.” The phrase “as history informs us” gives the reader an impression of established fact which the evidence does not warrant. Traditions concerning Matthew’s death differ, and later hagiographical accounts contain legendary material. A tradition that Matthew was killed in association with liturgical worship may be studied as tradition, but it is not a fact recorded by the New Testament and the precise manner of his death is not historically secure enough to carry the weight Müller places upon it.
NB.That caution is justified by the historical record. The Donation of Constantine and the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals were both later exposed as fabrications, despite having circulated under supposedly ancient authority and being used to support ecclesiastical claims. The point is not that every tradition is false, but that forged documents and false attribution demonstrably entered church history. Therefore, when Müller says “history informs us,” the claim must be sourced and tested rather than accepted on authority alone.
His story concerning Andrew is even more revealing because the source can be identified. Müller presents a long dialogue between Andrew and Aegeas in which Andrew supposedly declares, “To the Almighty God I offer up a living sacrifice, not incense-smoke, not flesh of bellowing bulls, not blood of goats; but I offer daily to God on the altar of the cross a spotless lamb, whose flesh after the believer has eaten, and drunk its blood, the lamb that was sacrificed remains entire and living.” Aegeas asks how this can be, and Andrew continues to explain the mystery of the Lamb who is sacrificed, eaten and nevertheless remains whole.
The words sound extremely powerful when introduced simply as something “the Apostle answered.” The problem is that the dialogue belongs to the apocryphal Acts or Martyrdom tradition of Andrew, not to the canonical Acts of the Apostles and not to an authenticated apostolic transcript. This does not make the text useless for understanding the development of Christian belief. It does mean that Müller should tell his reader what kind of source he is using. A late apocryphal narrative cannot simply be introduced as though it were direct apostolic evidence.
Müller then turns to Justin Martyr, where the historical footing is far stronger. Justin, writing in the second century, genuinely describes Christian Sunday worship. He tells us that the writings of the apostles and prophets are read, the presiding minister exhorts the congregation, the believers pray, bread and wine mixed with water are brought, thanksgiving is offered and the whole assembly responds “Amen.” Deacons distribute the Eucharistic food to those present and carry portions to those absent. Justin says participation is restricted to those who believe the Christian teaching, have been regenerated through baptism and live according to Christ. He also says, “Nor do we take these gifts as common bread and common drink,” but associates them with the flesh and blood of the incarnate Jesus, and appeals to the apostolic “commentaries” called Gospels in explaining the words of institution.
This is valuable and genuinely early evidence. It shows that by Justin’s period Christians were already treating the Eucharist with extraordinary seriousness, celebrating it in structured worship and associating it strongly with Christ’s body and blood. It does not, however, prove all of Müller’s claims. Justin’s second-century mixed water does not tell us that Jesus mixed water into the cup in the upper room. Justin’s description of his community’s worship does not supply the plate, Christ’s internal prayer, the “loss of sacramental life,” the secret ordination of the Twelve or the first-person speech Müller has created for Jesus.
Müller’s rendering of Justin also requires care. He translates Justin as saying that the blessed food “is changed into the flesh and blood of that Jesus incarnate.” A widely used translation instead reads the relevant clause in such a way that “transmutation” refers to the process by which ordinary food nourishes and becomes our own flesh and blood before Justin identifies the Eucharistic food with Christ’s flesh and blood. None of this requires reducing Justin to a merely symbolic theology; his Eucharistic belief is plainly very high. The point is that Justin’s exact wording should not be quietly recast so that it appears to state the later scholastic formula in precisely Müller’s terms.
Müller proceeds to Cyprian, saying that the third-century bishop calls the Mass “an everlasting sacrifice.” This is important evidence of developed sacrificial language, but it remains third-century testimony rather than apostolic eyewitness testimony. He then turns to Augustine, whom he says calls the Mass “a true and august sacrifice” which has “supplanted all former sacrifices,” and quotes the striking formulation: “Old things have passed away, and new things have been made in Christ, in such a way that altar has yielded to altar, bread to bread, lamb to lamb, blood to blood.” Augustine undoubtedly uses sacrificial and altar language, but his wider theology of “true sacrifice” is broader than a narrow identification with the Eucharistic rite; he can describe acts ordered toward holy union with God as true sacrifices. Again, the evidence tells us a great deal about fourth- and fifth-century Christian interpretation. It cannot simply be converted into unrecorded apostolic history.
Ambrose’s letter to Emperor Theodosius similarly demonstrates the later liturgical world. Müller quotes Ambrose saying, “I carried the letter of your friendliness with me to the altar; I placed it on the altar, I held it in my hand that your faith might speak by my voice, and the letter of Augustus might perform the function of a sacerdotal oblation.” That is unquestionably language of altar, priesthood and oblation. It reveals a mature fourth-century liturgical context. What it cannot possibly establish is that Jesus mixed water with wine, underwent a “mystic death,” lost “sacramental life,” or secretly ordained the apostles during the Last Supper. Chronology does not disappear merely because the witness is an important Church Father.
John Chrysostom presents a still more interesting case because Müller cites language that initially appears exceptionally strong for his position. Chrysostom says, “Jesus Christ has ordained a sacred rite and changed the sacrifice, and instead of the slaughter of animals, has commanded Himself to be offered up.” He then asks, “What then? Do not we offer up daily? We offer indeed making a commemoration of His death, and this oblation is one, not many.” He reasons that because the same Christ is present everywhere there are not many Christs or many fundamentally different sacrifices. But Chrysostom then supplies a qualification that must not be allowed to disappear: “Not a different sacrifice, as did the high priest of those Jewish days, but the same do we always celebrate, or rather we make a commemoration of a sacrifice.”
That “or rather” matters. Chrysostom uses extremely strong sacrificial language and should not be forced into a theology he did not hold, but his own qualification demonstrates that he was conscious of the problem created by Hebrews’ once-for-all language. The relation between liturgical offering and the historical sacrifice cannot simply be flattened into the proposition that Christ is repeatedly undergoing another immolation. Müller also quotes Chrysostom saying, “The oblation which has place this day, and that which was celebrated yesterday, and that which takes place day after day, is like to, and the same as that which took place on that Sabbath day, and in nothing was that more venerable than this, nor this less valuable than that, but one and the same, equally awful and saving.” This is remarkably strong patristic language, but precisely because it is so strong it must be placed beside the repeated language of Hebrews: Christ does not offer Himself often; He was once offered; He offered one sacrifice for sins for ever; by one offering He perfected those who are sanctified; and where remission exists there is no more offering for sin. The later interpretation must be tested by the apostolic text, not the apostolic text silently rewritten through the later interpretation.
The deeper problem with speaking as though Christ must continually be offered is that it fails to reckon with who the victim actually is and where His sacrifice now stands. This was not the death of an ordinary mortal whose offering gradually recedes into the past and therefore requires renewal. The One who offered Himself is the eternal Word, the One who “was in the beginning with God” and through whom “all things were made” (John 1:1–3). He entered mortality once, took flesh once, shed His blood once, died once, rose beyond the dominion of death, and then carried the efficacy of that completed sacrifice into the heavenly sanctuary itself. Hebrews does not say that Christ remains upon an earthly altar awaiting continual re-offering; it says that “by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us” (Hebrews 9:12), and that He has entered “into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us” (Hebrews 9:24). The sacrifice occurred once within human history, but what it accomplished has passed with the risen Christ into the eternal presence of God. Its historical moment does not need to be repeated because its value is no longer confined to that historical moment. The Priest who offered it is eternal, the sanctuary into which He entered is heavenly, the redemption He obtained is called eternal, and the covenant secured by His blood does not expire when another day begins on earth.
Eternal means everlasting: having no end, not limited by time, and continuing forever.
This is why the image in Revelation is so powerful: John sees “a Lamb as it had been slain” standing before the throne (Revelation 5:6). The Lamb bears eternally the reality and victory of His sacrifice, but He is standing and alive; He is not being slaughtered again. Calvary has not vanished simply because the crucifixion occurred in history. Its once-for-all accomplishment is eternally present before God in the person of the risen Lamb Himself. There is therefore no need to bring Christ repeatedly back into a sacrificial state on earth in order to keep His offering before the Father. Christ Himself is there. The wounds belong to the living Christ; the blood has already secured eternal redemption; the High Priest has already entered the true sanctuary; and He now “ever liveth to make intercession” (Hebrews 7:25). His eternal priesthood consists not in an endless sequence of new sacrificial moments, but in the everlasting presence and efficacy of the one sacrifice He has already made.
That is precisely why Hebrews can hold two truths together without contradiction: Christ’s priesthood lasts for ever, while His self-offering happened once for all. Eternity does not require repetition. Quite the opposite: because the sacrifice of the eternal Son has entered the eternal sanctuary, repetition would add nothing to it. What could another offering contribute to a redemption already called “eternal”? What could another sacrificial act add when “by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14)? Earthly sacrifices had to be repeated because they belonged to a temporary order and could never finally remove sin. Christ’s does not repeat because the One who offered it has passed through death, entered heaven itself and lives eternally before the Father as the once-slain and now living Lamb. The sacrifice remains for ever not because Christ is forever being sacrificed, but because the Christ who was sacrificed once lives for ever and the efficacy of His offering can never pass away.
The material Müller attributes to Proclus raises an even more serious source problem. He quotes a supposed account in which the great teachers of the Church handed down the “mystic liturgy,” including “Blessed Clement, the disciple and successor of the Prince of the Apostles — the Apostles themselves dictating to him.” The narrative then says that after the Ascension the apostles remained together, “passed whole days in prayer,” and, finding “the mystic sacrifice of the Lord’s body a great consolation,” “sang Mass at very great length.” The newly baptised were supposedly instructed in these mysteries, and the apostles offered prayers while expecting the Holy Ghost “by His own divine presence” to make the bread and the wine mixed with water “that very same body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
This is a detailed description of apostolic liturgy immediately after the Ascension. Yet Acts contains no such description. Acts tells us that the early believers continued in the apostles’ doctrine, fellowship, breaking of bread and prayers. It describes Pentecost, preaching, baptism, persecution, miracles, missionary journeys, imprisonments, councils and the expansion of the Gospel. It never says that the apostles “sang Mass at very great length,” waited for the Holy Ghost to transform mixed wine and bread into Christ’s body and blood, or dictated this elaborate liturgy to Clement. Even more importantly, the treatise traditionally attributed to Proclus from which such material was drawn has long been disputed, and critical scholarship has assigned it to a much later author even Catholic reference material has cautiously referred to it as a work “attributed to St. Proclus.” Müller nevertheless presents the passage as though “St. Proclus” were simply preserving reliable knowledge of what the apostles did immediately after the Ascension.
The underlying theological source behind much of Müller’s presentation becomes unmistakable when he gives a long doctrinal explanation beginning, “Because under the former Testament… there was no consummation or perfection,” and says it was therefore necessary that another priest arise according to Melchizedek. Christ, Müller says, though about to offer Himself once upon the cross, wished “to leave to His spouse the Church a visible sacrifice” through which the bloody sacrifice of Calvary would be represented and its saving virtue applied. At the Last Supper He supposedly “offered to His Father His body and blood, under the species of bread and wine,” delivered them to the apostles “whom He then appointed the priests of the New Testament,” and commanded both them and “their successors in the priesthood” to offer this sacrifice through the words, “Do this in commemoration of me.”
This is substantially the doctrinal formulation of the Council of Trent, Session XXII, Chapter I. That identification is crucial because it reveals what has happened. Müller is not merely paraphrasing Luke. A sixteenth-century conciliar interpretation of the Last Supper has been taken and written backwards into the first-century scene. Luke records Jesus saying, “This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.” The sentence itself does not explicitly say, “By these words I appoint you priests of a new sacrificial order.” It does not say, “Offer Me to the Father as a propitiatory victim.” It does not say, “Your successors will inherit this sacrificing power.” It does not say, “Make bread My body and wine My blood.” It does not say, “Continually present Me sacrificially to heaven.” Those are conclusions of the later system.
That is why Müller’s invented speech is not a minor literary flourish. When he says “Our Saviour meant to be thus understood” and then makes Jesus say “make it My body,” “make it My blood” and “continually present to heaven” the same sacrifice, virtually the whole Tridentine interpretation is being inserted into Christ’s mouth. The later doctrine is no longer merely an interpretation of the text; it has been made to sound like part of the text itself.
Müller finally leaves historical and theological argument behind and closes with the story of St. John of Sahagún, or John a Facundo. According to the story, John took unusually long celebrating Mass because he was granted extraordinary visions. His prior supposedly explained that “Father John’s Mass lasts so long because God bestows on him the grace of seeing the mysteries of the holy sacrifice.” Christ allegedly appeared to him, conversed with him, sent heavenly light from His wounds and showed His glorified body “shining like a most brilliant sun.”*Apollo? Whatever devotional value a reader may assign to such a hagiographical story, it is not apostolic evidence. Yet Müller concludes: “Although we do not see with our eyes the stupendous wonders that take place in Mass, yet let us believe them most firmly, nay even more firmly than if we could see them with our eyes,” and then invokes Christ’s words, “Blessed are they that have not seen and have believed.”
John 20:29, however, has a defined subject and context. Thomas had demanded visible evidence that Jesus had risen. Christ appeared and said, “Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” Jesus was speaking about faith in His resurrection, not establishing a universal rule that Christians should believe every later supernatural religious story with greater certainty precisely because they cannot see any evidence for it. John immediately explains that the signs in his Gospel were written “that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.” Scripture elsewhere commands, “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21), and commends the Bereans for searching the Scriptures to test what they were being taught. Biblical faith is not credulity. Evidence serves faith; lack of evidence is not automatically transformed into a reason for stronger belief.
This becomes particularly important when Müller's chapter is read alongside his statements elsewhere in the same book. He does not merely say that the Mass remembers Calvary or permits believers to participate in the benefits of Christ’s completed sacrifice. He reasons that because Christ is “a priest forever,” “Therefore He must offer sacrifice forever.” He says Christ “perpetually repeats and uninterruptedly continues His atoning and redeeming acts.” Elsewhere he speaks of “an infinite satisfaction” being “continually rendered” to God and says “the same Jesus Christ Who offered Himself up on the Cross for the sins of the whole world is daily offered up by the priest in the Holy Mass.”
These statements have to be placed beside Hebrews, not merely beside later sacramental explanations. Hebrews does not say that Christ’s eternal priesthood means His sacrificial act must perpetually be repeated. It says that because He “continueth ever” He has an unchangeable priesthood and “ever liveth to make intercession,” while the same argument insists that He “needeth not daily” to offer because He did so once. Müller makes perpetual offering the necessary expression of eternal priesthood; Hebrews makes continuing intercession the activity of the eternally living Priest after the once-for-all sacrifice.
The implications become still more serious when Müller turns to divine judgment. Elsewhere in The Holy Mass he asks why the sinful world is not continually struck by catastrophic punishments like those recorded in the Old Testament and suggests that without the propitiatory Mass mankind would have suffered destruction comparable to Sodom and Gomorrha. His explanation reaches the extraordinary statement that “in all countries, and at all times, every hour, Jesus Christ is offered up by the priests of the Catholic Church, and the hands of God are bound.”
Fairness requires recognising the language as metaphorical. Müller does not imagine priests physically restraining God, nor does standard Catholic theology teach that each Mass constitutes another physically distinct Calvary. Müller would describe the Mass as the same sacrifice sacramentally represented and applied. But the metaphor still has a meaning in his argument: punishment that would otherwise fall is restrained because priests continually offer Christ. Combined with his language of “infinite satisfaction” being continually rendered and Christ being daily offered, the priestly rite becomes part of the explanation for why divine judgment does not descend upon a wicked world in a manner comparable with Sodom.
That claim deserves to be tested against the New Testament’s doctrine of judgment. Jesus says, “For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son” (John 5:22). The Son whom Müller presents as being continually offered so that “the hands of God are bound” is Himself the Judge. Christ is not merely the sacrificial object through whom other men obtain some kind of leverage over divine justice; He is the One to whom judgment belongs. Müller does not literally say that priests determine the date of final judgment, and it would be unfair to put those precise words into his mouth. What he does attribute to priestly offering is a restraining influence upon divine punishment, and the question remains: where does the New Testament teach that the repeated priestly offering of Christ is what prevents another Sodom-like judgment from falling upon the world?
Scripture’s response to impending judgment is repeatedly repentance, faith and return to God. If Müller believes humanity has become wicked enough to deserve another Sodom and Gomorrha, the biblical answer should be a call to repent and turn to Christ, not a suggestion that a continuing priestly ritual is what prevents deserved judgment from falling. The danger in Müller’s rhetoric is that the Mass can begin to function in the reader’s imagination not simply as remembrance or communion but as a supernatural mechanism of restraint: mankind sins, judgment is deserved, priests offer Christ continually, satisfaction is rendered, and therefore the divine hand is held back.
That is particularly difficult to reconcile with the identity of the Christian in the New Testament. Acts 11:26 says “the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.” A Christian is first of all a disciple, and Christ defines discipleship personally: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me” (Luke 9:23). The direction is toward Christ and after Christ. Christ offered Himself for sin so that sinners might be reconciled to God, not so that a later class of supposedly holy men could become managers of divine judgment by continually offering Him. The believer is called to repent, believe, follow, obey and abide in Christ.
The tension in Müller’s whole sacrificial scheme can therefore be expressed without caricaturing Catholic theology. He insists that Calvary is complete and that the Mass is not another physical crucifixion; nevertheless, his own language continually reintroduces the grammar of ongoing sacrificial action. Christ “must offer sacrifice forever”; He “perpetually repeats” His atoning acts; satisfaction is “continually rendered”; He is “daily offered up”; His sacramental life is lost in “a kind of mystic death”; and the continual priestly offering is said to restrain divine punishment so that “the hands of God are bound.” Hebrews, by contrast, explains Christ’s priesthood with the language of a completed offering whose efficacy continues precisely because the Priest Himself lives for ever: He does not need daily offering; He offered Himself once; He offered one sacrifice for sins for ever; by one offering He perfected those who are sanctified; He sat down; He ever lives to intercede; and where remission exists there is no more offering for sin.
Once the chapter is viewed as a whole, Müller’s method becomes unmistakable. Adam and Eve are made explicitly repentant and forgiven when Genesis does not narrate the event; an unrecorded institution of bloody sacrifice is asserted; Müller’s interpretation of the victim becomes what every sinner publicly confessed; sacrifice is declared to remain the essence of Christianity; Melchizedek “bringing forth” bread and wine becomes Melchizedek “offering” bread and wine; a pure offering in Malachi becomes specifically the worldwide Roman Mass; the Last Supper acquires a plate, pure wine, mixed water and a chalice; Christ acquires a prolonged prayer and then an internal prayer which no apostle heard; a gesture toward heaven is supplied and the intention of the gesture explained; the bread and cup become separate sacramental representations of Christ’s death; Christ becomes a “holy Victim” laid upon the table “in the state of a sacrifice”; He undergoes a “kind of mystic death” and loses His “sacramental life”; the apostles are ordained without an evangelist mentioning their ordination; they immediately communicate one another although the Gospel does not say so; an analogy with the holocaust is used to make Communion necessary to complete the sacrifice; and then the theology is summarised as though it were the historical institution of “the first Mass.”
The process continues beyond the upper room. “Do this in remembrance of me” becomes an invented speech commanding the apostles to “make” Christ’s body and blood and continually present Him sacrificially to heaven.
“Ministered to the Lord” in Acts becomes “sacrificing to the Lord.” A disputed story of Matthew’s martyrdom is introduced with “history informs us.” An apocryphal Andrew speaks as though an authenticated apostolic transcript has survived. Justin’s genuinely early second-century worship is allowed to colour the first-century scene. Cyprian, Augustine and Ambrose provide increasingly developed sacrificial vocabulary from later centuries. Chrysostom’s strong language of offering is cited, while his own important qualification that Christians “rather” make a commemoration of a sacrifice must be retained. A disputed text (another forgery?) attributed to Proclus gives us apostles “singing Mass at very great length” and waiting for the Holy Ghost to transform mixed wine and bread into Christ’s body and blood, although Acts says nothing of the kind. The Council of Trent supplies the mature theological structure of a visible sacrifice, New Testament priests and priestly successors. Finally, a saint’s visionary Mass is invoked and the reader is instructed to believe unseen Eucharistic wonders “even more firmly” than sight itself.
This helps explain how sincere readers could come away believing that Müller’s elaborate reconstruction was simply biblical Christianity. Scripture appears first and establishes authority. Müller then adds interpretation beside it. Interpretation becomes narrative. Later Fathers appear beside apostles. Apocryphal literature is allowed to sound apostolic. A council’s theology is presented as the meaning Christ always intended. A miracle story is sealed with a saying of Jesus.
Unless the reader continually asks where each sentence originated, the boundaries disappear.
Restoring those boundaries changes the chapter entirely. Scripture gives us the Fall, the promise, Old Covenant sacrifice and its fulfilment in Christ. Scripture gives us Melchizedek bringing forth bread and wine and blessing Abraham, but it does not call the bread and wine a sacrificial offering. Scripture gives us Christ’s unique priesthood and explicitly develops its relation to Melchizedek without making an alleged bread-and-wine sacrifice the centre of the argument. Scripture gives us Jesus taking bread, giving thanks, breaking it and giving it; it gives us the cup; it gives us His words concerning His body and blood; it gives us the command to remember Him. Paul tells believers that as often as they eat this bread and drink this cup they proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.
Scripture gives us Christ’s actual body offered, His actual blood shed, His actual suffering, His actual death outside the gate, His resurrection, His ascension, His entrance into the heavenly sanctuary, His sitting at the right hand of God and His continuing intercession. It gives Christians spiritual sacrifices, living sacrifice, praise, thanksgiving, doing good and sharing.
What it does not give us is Müller’s Last Supper plate, his mixed water, his unrecorded interior prayer inside the mind of Christ, his liturgical host and chalice, his theory that the separate consecrations represent the separation of Christ’s blood and body, his “loss of sacramental life,” his “mystic death,” his hidden sacerdotal ordination of the Twelve, his apostles immediately communicating one another, his claim that the Last Supper was the first Roman Catholic Mass, his invented command “make it My body” and “make it My blood,” his identification of Acts 13 as a Mass, his Matthew murdered while celebrating Mass, his apocryphal Andrew presented as apostolic testimony, his apostles singing Mass for great lengths of time after the Ascension, or his claim that a continual priestly offering of Christ metaphorically binds the hands of God against another Sodom and Gomorrha.
Those things come from different places. Some are theological inference, some later liturgical development, some patristic interpretation, some conciliar definition, some disputed history, some apocryphal literature, some hagiographical legend, and some are narrative details for which Müller supplies no apostolic source at all. Recognising those categories does not require claiming that every later Father or Catholic theologian deliberately lied. Historical theology matters, and later interpretations deserve to be studied accurately. What cannot be permitted is the collapse of all these later sources into the biblical narrative itself.
A fourth-century Father is not an evangelist. An apocryphal apostolic story is not canonical Acts. A disputed text attributed to Proclus is not eyewitness testimony to apostolic worship. The Council of Trent is not Luke. A medieval or early-modern miracle story is not the Gospel of John. And Müller cannot know an unrecorded prayer silently spoken inside the mind of Jesus Christ simply because later theology would benefit from Christ having prayed it.
Ultimately, the strongest challenge to Müller does not require hostility toward Catholics or contempt for the Fathers. It requires allowing Hebrews to finish its own argument. The eternal High Priest “needeth not daily” to offer because “this he did once, when he offered up himself.” He entered the holy place once with His own blood. He was once offered to bear the sins of many. His body was offered once for all. After one sacrifice for sins for ever He sat down at the right hand of God. By one offering He perfected for ever those who are sanctified. He ever lives to make intercession. And where remission has been accomplished, “there is no more offering for sin.”
Then Hebrews takes believers outside the gate to Christ Himself and tells them what they may continually offer: praise, thanksgiving, doing good and sharing. Paul tells them to present their own bodies as a living sacrifice. Peter calls believers “an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5, KJV). Those spiritual sacrifices must not be confused with atonement. Praise, thanksgiving, obedience, doing good, sharing, prayer and the offering of our own lives to God are responses to redemption already accomplished; they do not purchase forgiveness, remove guilt, reconcile the sinner to God or bear the penalty of sin. Atonement belongs to Christ alone. He alone shed the blood of the New Testament, He alone “put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26), and He alone is “the mediator of the new testament” (Hebrews 9:15). The believer therefore does not offer spiritual sacrifices in order to make atonement, but because atonement has already been made. That distinction is fundamental: our sacrifices are thanksgiving; His sacrifice is redemption. Our sacrifices are acceptable because of Him; His sacrifice is what made us acceptable in the first place. No saint, no priest,pope, no believer and no repeated religious act can enter that unique work of atonement, because Scripture places it entirely in the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus Christ.The New Testament’s direction is therefore not toward a renewed earthly system in which Christ must perpetually be placed in a sacrificial state, but toward the living Christ whose sacrifice has already accomplished redemption and whose priesthood continues through His indestructible life and intercession.
That is also why Müller’s language about judgment deserves such careful scrutiny. The Father has committed all judgment to the Son. The same Christ who offered Himself for sinners is the Judge. The Christian response to sin and impending judgment is therefore not confidence that “holy men” are continually sacrificing Christ in order to restrain divine punishment; it is repentance, faith and discipleship under the very One who died, rose and will judge. Christians were first called Christians because they were disciples, and Christ’s own summons remains, “follow me.”
Müller’s chapter repeatedly tells the reader that something happened, that Christ intended something, that apostles understood something, or that a later sacrificial system is what an ancient text “really” means. Yet again and again the decisive propositions appear only after Müller, later theologians, Fathers, apocryphal writers, councils or devotional traditions have supplied what the inspired text itself does not say. The appropriate response is therefore not a competing imaginative reconstruction but the simplest test available to every reader of Scripture: before accepting the plate, the water, the chalice, the secret prayer, the mystic death, the sacerdotal ordination, the perpetual offering, the Acts 13 Mass, the apocryphal martyrdom speeches, the disputed apostolic liturgy, the Tridentine expansion of “Do this,” the visionary wonders, or the claim that priestly offering restrains the Judge, ask one question and insist upon an answer from the text itself:
Where is this actually written in Scripture, where has God Revealed it?
I would like to remind readers of the warning God gives against adding to His revealed words: “If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book” (Revelation 22:18, KJV). Although that warning specifically concerns “the words of the prophecy of this book,” its severity should make any Christian extremely cautious about placing words into the mouth of Christ that Christ is never recorded as saying, expanding a biblical sentence into a fabricated speech, or presenting later theological language as though it were the words of Scripture. A false quotation does more than interpret a passage incorrectly; it gives human words the appearance and authority of divine words. Where God has not spoken, no man has the right to make Him speak.
Scripture itself gives us the standard by which such claims must be judged: “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (Isaiah 8:20, KJV). John is equally uncompromising: “He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (1 John 2:4, KJV). And Paul gives the principle that should govern every conflict between the words of God and the assertions of men: “Let God be true, but every man a liar” (Romans 3:4, KJV). No priest, theologian, saint, council,pope, tradition or devotional writer has authority to improve upon what Christ said, supply words He never spoke, or make an invented speech carry His name. When the words attributed to Christ cannot be found in the testimony God actually gave us, the authority belongs to Scripture—not to the man who added them.
See chapter IX
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