LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 2001, Page 84

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84

CONVENTION ESSAYS AND REACTIONS

Head.31 One part may not choose to reject the direction of
the Head.32 To be connected to another body is spiritual
adultery and implies sharing in teachings that are not
Christ’s.33 At the very least you can’t ride two horses at
once. Uncle Fred and Aunt Tilly belong to different confessional fellowships. We would be unfaithful and untruthful
to practice in such a way as to deny that obvious fact. Going
your own way is not an option.
Scott R. Murray
Memorial Lutheran Church
Houston, TX

6. Rather than having Lutheran fellowship practice
normed by definitions imposed from outside the New
Testament, such as the view of F. Schleiermacher, who
defined the church along ethical rather than doctrinal
lines. The church then becomes a human project
rather than a divinely worked gift and “whether fellowship is granted or withheld depends on the good or
ill will of those concerned.” Werner Elert, Eucharist
and Church Fellowship in the First Four Centuries,
trans. N. E. Nagel (St. Louis: CPH, 1966), 3.

Notes

8. 1 Cor 10:16. Paul’s text leads us to see the fellowship
of the body and blood cutting two ways across the
plane of the elements and across the plane of the
church. The bread and wine share in the body and
blood. They in turn are shared by the church.

1. 2 Tim 2:19.
2. “Many distinctively Protestant teachings were transmitted into United Methodist understandings through
doctrinal formulations such as the Articles of Religion
of the Church of England and the Heidelberg Catechism of the Reformed tradition.” United Methodist
Church Library “Our Doctrinal Heritage,” Online:
http://www.umc.org/churchlibrary/discipline/doctrinalstandards/doctrinal_heritage.htm. The Articles of
Religion of the Church of England state, “The Body of
Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only
after an heavenly and spiritual manner. And the mean
whereby the body of Christ is received and eaten in the
Supper, is Faith.” The Book of Common Prayer (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1928), 608. The Heidelberg Catechism Question 78 says, “Do the bread
and wine become the very body and blood of Christ?
No … the sacred bread does not become the body of
Christ itself, although, in accordance with the nature
and usage of sacraments, it is called the body of
Christ.” The Heidelberg Catechism (New York: United
Church Press, 1962), 76–77.
3. For example, in adult confirmation I had an adult catechumen contend that the Methodist Church certainly
does believe in the real and substantial presence of the
body of Christ in the Lord’s Supper in just the same
way the Lutheran Church does. I realized after some
discussion that she meant that her (soon to be former)
church had to teach what she could see was the manifest teaching of Jesus Himself on the presence in the
Supper, because she believed that the Methodist
Church was a biblical church. She simply did not know
the teaching of the Methodist Church.
4. 1 Cor 1:10. The distinction between persons as confessors and persons as individuals is one of the many
valuable contributions made by the CTCR document,
Admission to the Lord’s Supper (November 1999). See
31–48.
5. For example, Aunt Tilly might not be able to articulate the manducatio indignorum (the eating of the unworthy), yet believes that all communicants receive
the body of Christ. This is not the same as Luther’s
fides carbonaria. Aunt Tilly is not intentionally ignorant, although there are cases where lay persons are
unaware of our teaching. Usually this happens when
the pastors teach nothing.
200l Convention Proceedings

7. 1 Cor 1:9.

9. 1 Cor 10:18.
10. 2 Cor 8:4.
11. 2 Cor 13:13; Phil 2:1.
12. Phil 3:10; 1 Pet 1:14.
13. Phil 1:6.
14. 1 Pet 1:5.
15. 2 Pet 1:4.
16. 1 John 1:3.
17. 1 Pet 5:1; 2 Pet 1:4. The gift nature of the Gospel
proclamation means that the things shared by God
with His people are given through faith at once. Such
things are literally held in common. Those things are
given all at once in the sacrament of Holy Baptism.
This fact invalidates the contention that because our
own LCMS members cannot recite every theological
commonplace, we should not bar people from other
confessions from the Lord’s altar. The faith’s content
is a gift whether implicit or explicit.
18. Fellowship can entail the sharing all of a community’s
commonly held goods and property or its intellectual
and spiritual life. The primitive communism of the
early church (Acts 2–5) meant that everything offered
to the church was held in common. In Rom 11:17 sugkoinwnov" “denotes the close participation of the engrafted branch in the total life of the cultivated olive.”
Both good and evil may be participated in. For example, Matt 23:30. Friedrich Hauck, “koinwnov" ktl,” Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, G. Kittel,
ed., trans. G. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1965) 3: 804.
19. For a helpful expression of this interpenetration, see
William C. Weinrich, “Fellowship in Christ Is the
Church and Salvation,” For the Life of the World (January 2001): 8–10.
20. Compare this to the triumphant refrain of the Formula of Concord, “We believe, teach and confess.”
21. Phil 2:5.
22. “Introduction,” Lutheran Worship (St. Louis: CPH,
1982), 6.