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LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2019, Page 315

Scan: The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

II. THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS
3. Lutherans insist that the efficacy of Baptism does not depend upon a specific means of administering it.
Might the same hold true for the administration of the Lord’s Supper?
4. How much variation in the practice of the Supper is permissible? Does variation in practice ever negate
the Sacrament so that it is not Jesus’ body or blood? Can variations in distribution practice cause doubt in
the minds of communicants?

Chemnitz, Examination, 421.
Chemnitz, Examination, 423.
George Dedekenus, ed. Thesauri Consilium et Decisionum (Jenae: In Verlegung Zachario Hertels, Buchhandlers in
Hamburg, Gedruct bei Johann Nisio, 1671), 409.
13
C. F. W. Walther, Pastoral Theology, trans. John M Drickamer (Lutheran News Inc: New Haven, MO, 1995), 143.
10
11
12

IV. Final Considerations
Important questions remain. If Synod disapproved of intinction in 1944, but various publications in the LCMS
have viewed it more positively thereafter (to say nothing of the presence of intinction in practice in many LCMS
congregations), what does that mean? Does intinction invalidate the Sacrament? If intinction does not invalidate
the Sacrament, what, if any, are the consequences of a method of distribution that is unlike that of our Lord at the
Last Supper? Although official ecclesiastical pronouncements spoke against intinction since AD 340, allowances
for intinction in extraordinary circumstances were also acknowledged. Objections arose when the exceptional
threatened to become regularized. Why was it a permissible exception in certain prescribed circumstances, but not
permissible for regular use within the worship service? Finally, if Synod in convention has rejected the practice,
would it not be appropriate for the Synod in convention to speak once more, either reaffirming or revoking the
prohibition, since intinction is currently being practiced to varying degrees within the Synod?
Discussion Questions:
1. Should intinction be permissible at all? Why or why not? Under what circumstances? How much freedom
should individual congregations have in a matter of communion practice such as intinction?
2. Sometimes one faces difficult choices in pastoral care and practice. Luther chose not to alienate or
confuse the laity and so introduced the cup in Wittenberg slowly. Chemnitz notes that intinction was
preferable to receiving only the body of Christ. How do such considerations influence our discussion of
intinction and other matters of communion practice?
3. What is the relationship between Word and action in the Sacrament? At what point do concerns about the
distribution make human actions more important than the Word in the Sacrament?
4. How do we determine the relevance of synodical resolutions such as the 1944 rejection of intinction
today? Do past judgments always reign (consider, for example, Synod’s 1850 resolution against public
prayers by laymen and against ex corde prayers unless there is no approved written prayer available 28)?

315

Ibid.

15
Scott P. Rickert, “Reader Question: Why Do Catholics Receive Only the Host?”
http://catholicism.about.com/b/2009/10/16/reader-question-communion-and-intinction.htm.
16
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/resources/document-library/lambeth-conference/1948/resolution-118-administrationof-holy-communion?year=1948.
17
GPTS Online, February 11, 2013, http://gptsnews.gpts.edu/2013/02/intinction-ban-fails-in-pca.html.
18
Proceedings, 44th Convention of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, 255.
19
Ibid. N.b., Convention procedures in 1944 were different than they are today. In accepting the report of an LCMS
committee, Committee 7, the convention thereby affirmed (or, in today’s language, resolved) the Committee’s judgment on
individual glasses and intinction.
20
Theology and Practice of the Lord’s Supper, A Report of the Commission on Theology and Church Relations, May 1983,
16.
21
Ibid, 31.
22
Norbert H. Mueller and George Kraus, eds., Pastoral Theology (St. Louis: CPH, 1990), 105.
23
H. P. V. Renner, Together in God’s Presence: A Simple Explanation of the Liturgy with Questions for Study and
Discussion (Adelaide, South Australia: Lutheran Publishing House, 1989), 33.
24
While the New Testament does contain figurative uses of each (cf. Heb 10:27 and 6:7), the context here speaks against
such meanings in the Lord’s Supper texts.
25
Taft comments, “No one but a nominalist could by any stretch of the imagination call communion by intinction ‘eating and
drinking.’” Ibid, 229.
26
AE 53:30.
27
Kolb and Wengert, 362.
28
SB 1850, pp. 32–3 (SB 2, pp. 143–4; 1850 Protokoll, Session IX).

Commission on Theology and Church Relations
Approved February 25, 2017
Martin Chemnitz, Examination of the Council of Trent, trans. Fred Kramer, vol 2 (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House,
1978), 422.
2
Nathan Mitchell, Cult and Controversy: The Worship of the Eucharist Outside Mass, Studies in the Reformed Rites of the
Catholic Church, Vol. 4 (New York: Pueblo Publishing Company, 1982), 92.
3
Robert F. Taft, “Communion via Intinction,” Studia Liturgica 26 (1996): 232.
1

4
5

Ibid.

Ibid, 232–233.
Mitchell, 160–162.
7
Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, eds. The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church,
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 247.
8
Ibid, 245.
9
Ibid, 63. “Now it is obvious that this custom, introduced contrary to God’s command and to the ancient canons, is not right”
(KW, 62). The argument seems to be that neither the Scriptures nor the tradition of the church support this practice. Notice
how Melanchthon begins his argument by citing Saint Paul, then Cyprian, Jerome, Gelasius [better Gratian], and Nicholas of
Cusa. Until the rather recent withdrawal of the cup, church practice had conformed to “God’s command.”
6

2019 Convention Workbook