Defending "close communion"

This is how I ended up responding to our former Baptist pastor who expressed strong concerns about closed communion, following a lecture by Dr Ron Feuerhahn (see my earlier post on this subject).

Please bear in mind that my aim here was as much to reassure as to convince - in particular, please bear this in mind when reading my presentation of our (Lutheran) pastor's comments on the subject. If you have any issues with what our pastor had to say on this subject, please work on the assumption that I have misunderstood or misrepresented him. While I do not believe I have misrepresented what our pastor said, in the circumstances I have preferred to emphasise the differences between him and Dr Feuerhahn rather than the points of agreement. I'm really not interested in getting into a controversy on this whole issue, though any feedback is welcome.

Hi M______,

[...]

I did promise you I'd get back to you about close(d) communion. We raised this with our pastor at our membership class on Wednesday, and ended up spending most of the session discussing this and related issues.

We found the discussion reassuring. [Our pastor] said that he takes a different approach from Dr Feuerhahn on this issue. He explained that a range of views is found within Lutheranism on this issue, and Dr Feuerhahn is very much at one end of the scale on this. [Our pastor] described his own position as "close communion" rather than "closed communion" (OK, only one letter different - but I suppose one letter was enough to make the difference between Arianism and orthodox Christianity...).

In a nutshell, [our pastor] sees his job as not to peer into people's hearts to see what they really believe on every issue (like you said, the onus is ultimately on the participant to "examine themselves", per 1 Cor 11:28). Rather, he sees his task as simply to set out what Lutherans believe concerning the Lord's Supper: namely, that it is "the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ under the bread and wine, instituted by Christ Himself for us Christians to eat and drink" (as the Small Catechism puts it). If people profess their agreement to this teaching, then he is happy for them to come to the Lord's Table.

Of course, if someone does not agree with that teaching, then it is probably neither appropriate nor desirable (from their own point of view) for them to be taking part. It's not a case of saying, "Go away, you are a second-class Christian unworthy of the Lord's Table", but rather, "This is what we believe, teach and confess is going on at the Lord's Table - on that basis, do you actually want to take part in this?"

When people line up at the communion rail to receive the bread and wine, the words used in the distribution are "Take, eat; this is the true body of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, given into death for your sins" and "Take, drink; this is the true blood of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, shed for the forgiveness of your sins." I'm guessing you personally would not feel comfortable saying "Amen" to either of those statements. But then the issue isn't whether you are being unjustifiably "excluded"; the issue is whether the Lutheran understanding of the Lord's Supper is correct.

To go back to your comments about Christopher Idle and Dick Lucas [Anglican Evangelicals who had preached and taken the Lord's Supper at M's Baptist church recently] - while the three of you may not agree 100% on all points of doctrine, you are all pretty much agreed on what the Lord's Supper is about - that "is" means "represents", that the body and blood of Jesus are as far away from us as the heavens are from the earth, that what counts is our metaphorical "feeding" by remembrance and faith. In those circumstances it would indeed be wrong to exclude them from the Table.

As for my own views on this - well, I've never been a Zwinglian, have never held to a "mere memorial" view. Previously I've held to the classic Reformed view in which we do indeed receive and feed on the Lord's body as we eat the bread, and receive and drink the Lord's blood as we drink the wine, but that this feeding and drinking occurs only by faith - that it is not that Christ comes down to the Supper, but that we ascend by faith to Him in heaven (as taught by Calvin, the Heidelberg Catechism, the 39 Articles etc - Calvin himself regarded his teaching as being closer to Luther than to Zwingli).

The Lutheran teaching on the Lord's Supper, on the other hand, reflects the general Lutheran emphasis on the objective validity and efficacy of the Word of God - that God's promises remain true even if no-one believes them and (crucially) even if we have difficulty reconciling them with human reason or with the evidence presented to us by our human senses. So the Words of Institution ("this is my body ... this cup is the new testament in my blood") remain regardless of whether or not we believe them, and regardless of whether we can make sense of them with human reason.

I attach a PDF document which sets out the Lutheran teachings in more detail [note: this was qq.285ff. of the Explanation of the Small Catechism], but the ELCE's website summarises it well when it says:

LORD'S SUPPER
Lutherans believe and teach that in the other Sacrament, Holy Communion, the Lord Jesus Christ, according to His own plain Word, gives us His body and blood for the remission of sins; that the Lutheran belief, called the 'Real Presence', does not imply, either by transubstantiation or consubstantiation, any kind of change in the visible elements, that the bread remains bread and the wine remains wine, but by virtue of Jesus' word of institution, this bread is His body and this wine is His blood; that all who eat and drink at the Lord's Table receive His body and blood in and with the bread and wine, those who believe to the strengthening of their faith, those who reject to their condemnation; and that this Sacrament ought therefore to be withheld from those who are unable to examine themselves in the Christian faith.
References: Matthew 26: 26-28; Mark 14: 24; 1 Corinthians 11: 24-25, 26-28; Matthew 7: 6; 1 Corinthians 11: 29.

Note the emphatic rejection of "consubstantiation" - the whole point of the Lutheran position is that it does not seek to impose a philosophical explanation (such as Rome's "substance/accidents" distinction, or Calvin's "finitum non capax infiniti") on the "plain Word" of the Lord. It goes without saying that Roman teachings concerning transubstantiation, "the sacrifice of the Mass", adoration of the physical elements, the "priestly" function of the minister presiding, the need for priestly confession & absolution before partaking, etc, are all emphatically rejected.

While I do not expect to persuade you of the Lutheran position, I hope this helps alleviate your concerns about perceived "legalism" and "sectarianism". Also, that moving from the Reformed to the Lutheran position involves much less of a shift for me than it perhaps would for you. I hope we can agree to differ on the actual teachings about Lord's Supper as we already have done for some time on Baptism.

There are in fact a number of parallels with Baptism here: after all, there are literally thousands of churches in this country - and tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Christians - who would deny that I (and many other Christians) have been baptised, and a good number of those churches would exclude me from membership on this account. Some might even exclude me from the Lord's Table over it (which is at least consistent - it's difficult to see what meaning Baptism has if people can even participate in the Lord's Supper without being validly baptised).

However hurt or offended people may be at being "excluded" from the Lord's Table in a Lutheran Church, it is no less hurtful to be told that one's baptism is invalid, to be excluded from membership in a church over the issue, and to sit through testimonies at "re-baptisms" in which people repudiate and denigrate their earlier baptism (and, by implication, one's own), all of which I have had to endure on numerous occasions in the last ten years.

Given what the NT says about baptism, to deny that someone is baptised is virtually to deny that they are Christians. I know that you have never sought to say this - quite the opposite - and I remain grateful for this, particularly thinking back to when we had to "seek refuge" at C________ [M's, and our, previous church]. But I think the Baptism issue remains a good illustration of churches saying, quite legitimately, "This is what we believe. We don't deny that you are a true Christian, but we do believe you are wrong about this, and please understand that we need to behave in a manner which is consistent with what we believe. Please don't ask us to change our beliefs just so we can avoid awkwardness or discomfort."

As always, I look forward to your response on any of this.

All the best,

John

The Fearsome Pirate's Final Bow

Josh has kindly given permission to post his "Blog Obit" explaining why he has taken down his blog:

So you’re wondering why I took down the blog and deleted everything pertaining to it. Well, there are a lot of reasons. I’ve been seriously mulling this over since I was involved in a very ugly online incident primarily because people were so offended by things I never said and things I do not believe, yet somehow I was continually accused of saying and believing. At that time, it became apparent to me that my diction and grammar matter far less than how people feel when they read what I write—they react to the feeling, not the propositions. Further, they construct opinions and views which they ascribe to me based on this nebulous “feeling” they get from my blog (or comments), then persist in demanding that I explain why I believe such-and-so even after I’ve pointed out several times that I believe quite the opposite (such as being repeatedly accused of believing that salvation is found only in the LCMS, an absurd idea I have vehemently rejected in public and private discussion numerous times). Such has been experienced by me over e-mail, in comments, and on others’ blogs.

Explaining what I say consumes enough time without being demanded to explain what I don’t say. I have grown weary of continually having to turn to Merriam-Webster to prove to people that I really mean what I said I meant when I made a given statement. The appalling antipathy toward grammatical precision, mastery of the English language, logically supported claims, and consistent reasoning has driven me from the blogosphere, which revolves around pejoratives, slander, misrepresentation, straw men, emotions, and false witness. I see no point in speaking if the hearer is incapable of hearing anything other than what he has decided beforehand I ought to say. Communication is a completely dead art. Rather than perpetually engage the masses of self-wise illiterates, I prefer instead to interact only with those capable of choosing their words carefully and expressing exactly what they mean, whether they lived in the 16th century or the 20th.

A lesser reason is that blogging has become an addiction for me; I spend hours and hours each day doing it when I should be using my day more fruitfully. Of course, spending two hours writing something to have it completely distorted and ripped apart by undiscerning readers is hardly a rewarding experience, which led me to question why I constantly did it. Spending as much time as I do blogging has resulted in a noticeable decrease in opportunities to actually live life, so it’s time to stop.

I also was uncomfortable with the high profile. I’m not a spokesman for the Missouri Synod, Lutheranism, or anything else. I’m only 22 as of this writing (I’ll turn 23 in July) and nowhere near being established in life. I’m far, far away from having career, home, or wife, and consequently am not really in a position in life where I can engage in doctrinal battles and not have it adversely affect the attainment of those goals. I’ve lost a lot of sleep and have been in seemingly perpetual bad moods because of things people have said either to me, about me, or about the confession of my church, and frankly, I was a grumpy insomniac before I ever knew what a “blog” was, so this wasn’t helping me any. The longer my blog was around and the more people that read it, the higher their expectations were, the more sleep I lost, the crankier I got, and the less I got done.

Also, I really didn’t like the person I was becoming via the blog. Blogging makes my disposition increasinlgy negative, in part because there are so many idiots on the Internet, and in part because you increase your readership by grandstanding and baiting people into arguments. It’s a sick pleasure to troll on someone else’s blog and do all the things I just complained about, and I’m not innocent of it. People have said I come of as arrogant on my blog with good reason. I can be a pretty arrogant guy, and blogging just feeds that (however, what people call “arrogance” is often no more than believing that what the Evangelical Lutheran Church confesses is true. I wish more people were “arrogant” in such a way). People say things on the Internet that they never would have said in real life, and the last time I checked, “people” included me.

And let’s not forget the endless hatred I incurred for, you know, actually believing all that stuff we confess in the Book of Concord! Somehow, people constantly expected that true Christian charity would compel me to either flatly reject or apologize for Article VII of the Augsburg Confession. Hence, my repeated assertion that Article VII is a most true and Christian article, rejection of which compromises the integrity of the church in a given location and the pure proclamation of the Gospel was met with endless hatred of my person. God help me, I cannot confess otherwise. The Church lives by Christ alone, who is present among us in the Gospel and Sacraments, not by pious sentiments, edifying feelings, or sincere commitments to justice and morality. Hence there is no room in the Church to compromise the Gospel for the sake of “love” or “brotherhood.” I can only say what Martin Luther said over 400 years ago: “Do not speak to me of any love and friendship where one would demolish faith or the Word. For not love but the Word brings everlasting life, God’s grace, and all heavenly treasures.” It is not the business of a Christian to apologize for the Gospel or to compromise it for the sake of “peace.” Christ asks us the same question he asked his disciples: “But who do you say that I am?” and we must answer with Peter, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” because it is upon this confession that Christ said “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church.” Woe to those who would turn that rock from Peter’s “You are the Christ” to “Love your neighbor,” because then the Gospel is changed into the Law and the Church no longer has anything to confess before the world. Indeed, where the Gospel is not confessed or preached, there is no Church at all, but only an association of people united by a common pious affection.

What else? Oh yeah. I get really, really, really sick of people acting like because they know my opinions on Baptism (it saves), taxes (too high), and soccer (it sucks), they’re qualified to make character judgments about me. A blog is not a window into the soul. There’s lots of me and my life that I don’t put on the blog, so quit acting like your in a place to make a comment on the “fruit” displayed in my “life.”

Finally, nothing good can come of a woman I’m interested in reading my blog. I’d like to not be single for the rest of my life, and my public rantings on the Internet weren’t helping a bit. If I meet someone, I’d rather her get her impressions of me by spending time with me, not by reading my scathing criticisms of Reformed doctrine or the Purpose-Driven Life. My blog was hardly of the sort to leave a favorable impression on the opposite sex.

So that’s it. Over 2 years and 279,173 words later, it’s over. I’m done. You may see me in the comments now and then, but my blogging days are over. If you’re offended by anything I’ve written here, tough crap. Don’t bother writing to me, because you’re probably one of the reasons I quit blogging. For everyone else, I’m still fishstik45atgoeshereyahoodotgoesherecom.

It's a shame to lose you, Josh, but I'm sure everyone'll agree that what you say above makes sense. All the best for the future - look forward to your continuing presence in people's comments sections!