Do all of the Christians who account themselves "Traditional" in their theology accept that the real presence is a physical reality?

[MarkRohfrietsch]

Yes, that would be close to my own understanding.

And what I was trying to explain, is that in a receptionist view, the elements themselves do remain unchanged; the change is in the person receiving them.

Sorry, yes, you are absolutely correct!

 

[MarkRohfrietsch]

If you push that objection too hard, you end up with impanation.

May be; Scripture is not exactly clear, as the meal is described as not only body and blood, but bread and wine. We don't know, but such might be the case; if one were to push this too far it would lead to consubstantiation, another belief that we consider an error. Too much speculation, theorization.

 

[The Liturgist]

As a confessional Lutheran, I know it is what it is, but also know that I am incapable of defining or describing how that it occurs. It is truly the very body and blood of our Lord.

Indeed, for my part, I believe and confess that it is truly the life-giving body and blood of our Lord, and since the most ancient liturgical prayers contain epikleses which petition the Holy Spirit to descend upon the creatures of bread and wine and change both into the true body and blood of Christ our God, which is the medicine of immortality, that that is what happens, but precisely how I cannot say. So I find myself agreeing with both the Lutheran and Catholic positions to a large extent, in that like you I believe it is the very body and blood, but I do not know how the Holy Spirit actually changes it and to what extent, if any, the bread and wine remain other than in appearance; I reject consubstantiation and my understanding is that Lutherans have always argued that consubstantiation and impanation are mischaracterizations of their Eucharistic theology. The Roman Catholic idea of transubstantiation has the benefit of ensuring proper reverence and making people aware of the real change, and is a good guess, but it strikes me as failing to explain Eucharistic miracles in which the Aristotelian categories on which it depends, which are the products of a philosophical construct as opposed to fundamental laws of physics, which one can still use philosophically I suppose, but to do so may not be optimally parsimonius.

The Lutheran approach on the other hand seems more in line with the Orthodox view that the Real Presence is a mystery, but that it is absolutely the physical Body and Blood of Christ that is received, and indeed I think Martin Luther felt that the Real Change happened on the altar as opposed to the Receptionist idea that the bread and wine become the actual Body and Blood when we receive them which @FireDragon76 proposes is compatible with Lutheran theology as established in the confessions. I would be interested in your opinion on the matter as I am not sufficiently well versed in the Book of Concord to say, but it seems to me that in general Lutheranism tends to largely align with High Church Anglican, Orthodox and Assyrian sacramental theology in that denominations like the LCMS seem to stress a real change happening on the altar, with some parishes even making use of Sacring Bells, as one frequently encounters in High Church Anglican parishes, of the Anglo Catholic variety*, the chief difference with Roman Catholicsm, and some of the Anglo Catholic parishes, being the absence of Eucharistic processions and devotions, even though the Reservation of the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle for the communion of the sick and the presanctfied liturgy during Lent is practiced by the Eastern Orthodox and some Oriental Orthodox (historically, all of them, but for reasons I believe are related to Islamic persecution and desecration of the consecrated Eucharist, this no longer happens in the Coptic Orthodox Church or most Syriac churches, however, recently, the Malankara Independent Syrian Church began celebrating a reconstruction of the ancient Syriac presanctified liturgy, known as the Signing of the Chalice (many people including myself believe that the concept of a Presanctified Liturgy originated with Mor Severus of Antioch). Also on that front, the Assyrian Church of the East has recently resumed celebrating the Presanctified Liturgy in some parishes and several Anglo Catholic parishes celebrate it on Good Friday, and there is also a version of it if memory serves among the Antiochian and ROCOR Western Rite Vicarates.

I cannot recall from my prior conversations with you @MarkRohfrietsch whether the LCMS allows reservation of the sacrament for communion of the sick or the Presanctified liturgy on Good Friday, although I know we have discussed it.’

By the way, I attended an LCMS liturgy yesterday and it was very good, although not as beautiful or as solemn as the liturgies celebrated at your parish. Still, it was very proper. They were using the Lutheran Service Book, but apparently until recently this church had used the 1941 hymnal, and I met a congregant who was unhappy about the contemporary language rewording of some of the hymns in the LSB. Now the version I have is contemporary, but I seem to recall you mentioning there was a traditional language version of the Lutheran Service Book available?

Oh, one interesting thing I might mention: I believe the bother of rewriting service books from traditional Ecclesiastical english to contemporary English and vice versa (more vice versa in my case) is about to become a thing of the past, as I have discovered that ChatGPT can do it extremely well. In fact, I even got ChatGPT to generate a liturgy based on typical features of the West Syriac Rite and it did a very good job. It can also translate Aramaic, Classical Armenian and Coptic with good results, which Google Translate cannot do at all, and it is infinitely better at translating Latin.


*Many of these conservative Anglo Catholic parishes in the C of E, and Continuing Anglican parishes in the US, seem to celebrate the Roman Rite in a manner closer to traditional Roman Catholic liturgics than one finds in most Novus Ordo parishes (and as an added plus, the altar in the conservative Anglo Catholic parishes is generally oriented for Ad Orientem celebration only, and the view of it is not obstructed by a second altar added for celebration versus populum in the wake of the 1969 Novus Ordo Missae, which it should be noted is not actually fully consistent with Sacrosanctum Concilium adopted by Vatican II, hence the controversy among many Catholics. Indeed the only liturgical change ordered by Vatican II that strikes me as ill-advised was their decision to delete Prime from the Divine Office, since Prime has historically been one of the most important and popular Hours, so much so that Primers, books containing the words for the office of Prime, were traditionally used to teach people Latin, hence the word remaining in our modern English vocabulary with the meaning of an introductory tutorial on a given subject.

I can understand in part the rationale, given that the Divine Office had Matins, Lauds and Nocturns, but I really think the ideal approach would have been to allow for an alternate, more compact form of the Office, such as that proposed by Cardinal Quinones in the16th century, and adopted in modified form by Archbishop Cranmer as Mattins and Evensong, with spectacular success, for the Church of England managed to accomplish what the Roman church has been struggling with for at least 800 years, that being increasing the public availibility and attendance of the Divine Office, or the Liturgy of the Hours as it is now known, and countering the trend towards it becoming a private devotion among the clergy (conversely, with the Novena, Angelus and various services of the Rosary, we see devotional prayer becoming public liturgical prayer).

 

[The Liturgist]

May be; Scripture is not exactly clear, as the meal is described as not only body and blood, but bread and wine. We don't know, but such might be the case; if one were to push this too far it would lead to consubstantiation, another belief that we consider an error. Too much speculation, theorization.
View attachment 332442

Jack Webb despite being divorced and remarried retained some loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church and was a good Christian, and we see this reflected in a number of episodes of Dragnet and Adam-12, most notably the Dragnet episode “The Big Little Baby Jesus” but also in an episode of the 1960s Dragnet where the first LAPD chaplain (now there are several), who was also unlike most police chaplains these days a sworn LEO working as a detective on the vice squad, played a prominent role, and in an episode of Adam 12 focusing on violence perpetrated by former Croatian fascists against other members of the Croatian community, in which a Croatian Roman Catholic priest helped Malloy and Reed solve the case.

 

[The Liturgist]

Sorry, yes, you are absolutely correct!

Then based on that it seems like Receptionism would be incompatible with Lutheran sacramental theology, since I don’t see how Luther etching “Hoc est corpus meum” into the table at the failed synod with the Calvinists and Zwinglians can be reconciled with a mere internal change.

Perhaps @FireDragon76 you meant what I erroneously thought Receptionism to be, that being a change in the elements from bread and wine to the body and blood of our Lord occurs when the communicants partake of them, as opposed to on the altar at the Words of Institution or the Epiklesis?

 

[The Liturgist]

In the ELCA, the practice is to not repeat the Words of Institution in those instances. The Words of Institution apply to all bread and wine used in the sacrament, not limited by a particular time or place.

That seems like the kind of thing my friend @MarkRohfrietsch has objected to, and explains to me why some people have complained about a Calvinistic element in the ELCA (and also in WELS and some other Lutheran churches). Also it seems strange to me that many ELCA churches do not serve the Eucharist every Sunday, despite the fact that the Scandinavian Lutheran churches whose American descendants comprise a large portion of ELCA’s membership have generally been among the more High Church/Evangelical Catholic Lutheran churches, especially the Church of Sweden (I believe the Church of Denmark is considered to be somewhat more Low Church, perhaps influenced by its close proximity to the Prussian Evangelical Church formed by the shotgun marriage of the Prussian Lutherans and Calvinists and the influence of the Calvinist monarchs who favored Calvinist theology; the LCMS and LCC resulted from a desire of Prussian immigrants to the US and Canada desiring to break free of these strictures, and likewise a desire on the part of the Calvinists to separate themselves from Lutherans, resulting in the United Evangelical church which would later merge with the largest of the Congregationalist denominations to form the UCC (many churches had already left by this point and joined what is now the CCCC, to which Park Street Church in Boston, which I greatly love, belongs).

In principle, it seems to me that Eucharistic piety and reverence could be reduced by any Eucharistic theology which allows for the use of bread and wine which has not been specifically consecrated. It runs contrary to my Orthodox-influenced views on the Eucharist, but even when I was a Calvinist and associated with the UCC, I objected to that sort of irreverence. Since my youth I have always believed in the Real Presence, that there is a change and something special happens to the Eucharist when it is validly consecrated.

 

[Andrewn]

So I find myself agreeing with both the Lutheran and Catholic positions to a large extent, in that like you I believe it is the very body and blood, but I do not know how the Holy Spirit actually changes it and to what extent, if any, the bread and wine remain other than in appearance; I reject consubstantiation

Do you reject consubstantiation and transubstantiation because they presents objective explanations of the Eucharist rather than leaving the change as a mystery? Or is there another reason?

I think Martin Luther felt that the Real Change happened on the altar as opposed to the Receptionist idea that the bread and wine become the actual Body and Blood when we receive them which @FireDragon76 proposes is compatible with Lutheran theology as established in the confessions.

My understanding is that the ELCA is in full communion with the Episcopalian Church. Perhaps their Eucharistic theology is different from the LCMS and more like the Anglicans?

 

[The Liturgist]

Yes, that would be close to my own understanding.

It might surprise you to hear this is extremely close to my view as well. My specific belief is derived from the most ancient liturgical texts, which, when they discuss what happens to the Eucharist at all, in the form of the invocation of the Holy Spirit in the anaphora, a prayer known as the Epiklesis (which is usually addressed to God the Father, but some anaphorae are addressed to the Son, such as that of St. Gregory the Theologian, and there are some anaphorae which are addressed primarily to God the Father or the Son, but have an epiklesis which is specifically addressed to the Holy Spirit*, whereas others, most notably the Roman Canon, lack a clearly defined epiklesis, but in those where one is present, the prayers consistently petition the Holy Spirit to descend upon the Eucharist and changethe offering of bread and wine into the body and blood of our Lord. Thus I believe that we partake of the body and blood of our Lord, which normally continues to appear for all practical purposes as bread and wine, even if examined under a microscope, but that which we partake of is truly his flesh and blood, physically present, but with the perceptual attributes of bread and wine for our benefit. Occasionally however, where it is beneficial for the economy of salvation, I believe Eucharistic miracles have occurred in which people have seen the flesh and blood of our Lord as flesh and blood, and not as bread and wine, but this is rare. I have heard, I can’t remember where, that in Eastern Orthodox churches, if the priest notices the Eucharist beginning to assume a fleshy appearance, he is supposed to pause the liturgy and contact his bishop who will discern if this is a beneficial miracle or something else. I would expect that you and Mark might be less credulous about the existence or possibility of Eucharistic miracles, but where these are reported to have occurred, they are reported to have resulted in conversions, for example, of a Muslim who converted to the Antiochian Orthodox church after perceiving the Eucharist in such a way, and was subsequently martyred. Of course, like so much else in the history and hagiography that is contained in the martyrologies and synaxaria of the ancient churches, these accounts are literally incredible and must largely be accepted on faith.

However, aside from my belief that this presence is physical, if not physiological, and also a thought, but not a definite belief, that the bread and wine might well be entirely replaced by the Body and Blood and remain only as perceptual attributes for our comfort in partaking the Eucharist, our views are I think largely the same. Of course if I definitely believed in the aforementioned suspicion, then they would be quite different, but I have not found any Patristic commentary that would say to what extent the bread and wine remain or fail to remain after the consecration, and absent Patristic commentary I feel uncomfortable making such a bold declaration, because it could well be in error. Indeed, even insofar as theological opinion is permissible, I prefer not to fully commit to it, although I would note that in the case of Origen Adimantius, his speculation concerning the possibility of the transmigration of souls was so outre that it led to him being anathematized by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches in the Three Chapters issued by Emperor Justinian, which were apparently ratified by the Fifth Ecumenical Council (although I have seen some Catholic admirers of Origen, such as the scholar who contributed the article on him for the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia, argue that the council in question did not actually do this).

*I am completely fine with this, since all three persons are consubstantial hypostases that share the Divine Essence of the Father, from whom the Son is eternally begotten and the Spirit eternally proceeds, and thus no matter which person of the Trinity you pray to, you are addressing the One God, who Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, memory eternal, has described as three persons eternally united in perfect love, and this union of love, sometimes called the Social Model of the Trinity, is something we are called to emulate, or to make ourselves collectively an icon of, in our relationships with our fellow Christians, our families, our neighbors and humanity in general. This corresponds with the emphasis the Presbyterian minister Fred Rogers, memory eternal, who was specially ordained by the PCUSA to minister to children via television, which he did, most notably through Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood*** on the importance of loving everyone as your neighbor.

**This terminology can be considered metaphorical given the doctrine of Divine Omnipresence, or it can be interpreted as a request for God the Holy Spirit to address the specific bread and wine; we see similar language in Scripture where the Holy Spirit in the appearance of a dove descended upon Christ in His Baptism, and I think a good Alexandrian interpretation of this Pneumatological terminology would be that despite being according to His Divine Essence shared with the uncreated Son from the unoriginate Father from whom He proceeds and the Son is begotten, present everywhere and in all things, the Holy Spirit acts upon or directs the uncreated energies of God (such as love or grace) to certain things and persons and this is referred to as descending upon or indwelling.

*** I don’t know if Mr. Rogers is well known in Australia, or was well known at least prior to the recent film in which he was played by Tom Hanks (amusingly, the 1989 horror-comedy film The Burbs featured an amusing and peaceful interlude in which the protagonist, also played by Tom Hanks, awakens from a nightmare to Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood playing on his television). Mr. Rogers developed his famous program partially in the 1950s, and then in a more refined form starting in the late 1960s, after a few years of partnership with a Canadian who had a similar program called Mr. Dressup, with several of the props used by Fred Rogers having originally been made by the CBC’s studios for his Canadian partner (whose own program may or may not have been as rich with subtle theological cues presented so a child could understand them as Mr. Rogers was; perhaps @MarkRohfrietsch or @Andrewn might know about, as the latter is obscure in the US despite many Canadian-produced childrens television programs being extremely well known, as they were presented in the US by the youth-oriented network Nickelodeon, a staple for those growing up in the late 80s and early 90s, which I heard has become defunct; these Canadian shows included a delightful program for preschoolers called Today’s Special, and a very good program of ghost stories (I would hesitate to call it horror, as there is a vast disparity between it and the rather gruesome horror films, and indeed because of the inabillity to show gore, frankly, the Canadian program, entitled Are you afraid of the Dark? Was rather better).

 

[The Liturgist]

Do you reject consubstantiation because it presents an objective explanation of the Eucharist rather than leaving the change as a mystery? Or is there another reason?


My understanding is that the ELCA is in full communion with the Episcopalian Church. Perhaps their Eucharistic theology is different from the LCMS and more like the Anglicans?

I reject consubstantiation primarily because I think it is an error to say that the body and blood of our Lord become consubstantial with bread and wine. Whatever happens, I don’t think it is that. I would go so far as to say that transubstantiation despite being more as specific, if not more so, is more plausible than consubstantiation or impanation. I believe our Lord is consubstantial only with the Father and the Holy Spirit and also the human race, since His divinity and humanity are hypostatically united, a fact reflected in His name Emanuel.

Regarding the ELCA being in full communion with the Episcopal Church, I doubt that has anything to do with the disparity in their Eucharistic theology with the LCMS, since the Episcopal Church embraces a wide range of Eucharistic theologies as these vary depending on the churchmanship of the congregation, from transubstantiation in the case of some high church and Anglo Catholic congregations to something like Zwinglianism or Receptionism in some of the low church or evangelical congregations. The Episcopal Church is largely more High Church than the Church of England or the Anglican Church of Canada (there was quite a fuss over the language used in the revised Holy Communion service in the 1962 BCP, the result being a compromise between the high church and low church parties), with historically Virginia and the Carolinas being the center of the low church movement in Episcopalianism, and elsewhere in the original 13 states a very high church mentality being common, but now things have spread out a bit, so there are some Anglo Catholic parishes in Virginia, and there are low church and broad church parishes right across the land. The Episcopal Church, since its bishops received their ordination from the Scottish Episcopal Church, has always used a Communion service based on that of the very high church Non Juring Episcopalians, with an Epiklesis (the Non-Jurors and Scottish Episcopalians copied this from the ancient Divine Liturgy of St. James, although with the 1979 BCP there are also epicleses sourced from elsewhere, for example, Eucharistic Prayer B is based on the Liturgy of Hippolytus from the Apostolic Tradition, which is an abbreviated form of the Anaphora of the Apostles historically used in the Ethiopian Church and probably the Church of Antioch, and possibly by some Roman churches, since we do know the Roman Canon was in use in antiquity, but we do not know at what point it became the sole anaphora of the Roman church, or if St. Hippolytus was quoting an Antiochene anaphora as a reference to a historic standard), most likely in a form closer to the Ethiopian form, for the book of Hippolytus probably included only those parts of relevance to bishops, like the Euchologion of St. Serapion of Thmuis. Also Eucharistic Prayer D is based on the Egyptian version of the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil. In both cases, these were influenced by Eucharistic Prayers 2 and 4 of the Novus Ordo Missae, which had an enormous impact on the 1979 BCP and the 1979 Lutheran Book of Worship, which features similar Eucharistic prayers. In the 1979 BCP, only Eucharistic Prayer C, derided by some Episcopalian priests as “The Star Trek Prayer” but admired by others, was an original composition.

The Episcopal Church has also never had the Black Rubric that seeks to dissuade a high church interpretation of the Eucharist in the 1662 BCP (this was also absent from the 1560 and 1604 editions of the BCP, due to the Elizabethan settlement, having been introduced, among many other controversial changes, in the 1552 BCP; it acquired its nickname because in the 1662 BCP it was customarily printed in black ink rather than red ink in those copies of the BCP printed with both colors.

Furthermore, any reliance on confessional material external to the BCP has been greatly eroded by the 39 Articles ceasing to be official doctrine in the Episcopal Church, although the 1979 still includes them along with other historical documents, including the Athanasian Creed, which the Episcopal Church unlike most other Anglican provinces has never officially subscribed to, and which indeed was missing from the original 1789 Episcopalian BCP and subsequent reprintings of it; I am not sure in which edition it began to be included, but I believe a minority of Episcopal churches do use it on Trinity Sunday, which also was the custom in the Church of England.

I would be interested to know how this compares with Canadian Anglican practices.

 

[MarkRohfrietsch]

Receptionism is also potentially compatible with the Lutheran confessions. But there are also Lutherans that are Consecrationists, particularly in the 16th and 19th centuries.

Not as we define it.

 

[MarkRohfrietsch]

As I recall, we agreed that for the sake of those receiving, the Words should have been said again. I doubt that anyone really noticed.

Yes, this!!

 

[MarkRohfrietsch]

Indeed, for my part, I believe and confess that it is truly the life-giving body and blood of our Lord, and since the most ancient liturgical prayers contain epikleses which petition the Holy Spirit to descend upon the creatures of bread and wine and change both into the true body and blood of Christ our God, which is the medicine of immortality, that that is what happens, but precisely how I cannot say. So I find myself agreeing with both the Lutheran and Catholic positions to a large extent, in that like you I believe it is the very body and blood, but I do not know how the Holy Spirit actually changes it and to what extent, if any, the bread and wine remain other than in appearance; I reject consubstantiation and my understanding is that Lutherans have always argued that consubstantiation and impanation are mischaracterizations of their Eucharistic theology. The Roman Catholic idea of transubstantiation has the benefit of ensuring proper reverence and making people aware of the real change, and is a good guess, but it strikes me as failing to explain Eucharistic miracles in which the Aristotelian categories on which it depends, which are the products of a philosophical construct as opposed to fundamental laws of physics, which one can still use philosophically I suppose, but to do so may not be optimally parsimonius.

The Lutheran approach on the other hand seems more in line with the Orthodox view that the Real Presence is a mystery, but that it is absolutely the physical Body and Blood of Christ that is received, and indeed I think Martin Luther felt that the Real Change happened on the altar as opposed to the Receptionist idea that the bread and wine become the actual Body and Blood when we receive them which @FireDragon76 proposes is compatible with Lutheran theology as established in the confessions. I would be interested in your opinion on the matter as I am not sufficiently well versed in the Book of Concord to say, but it seems to me that in general Lutheranism tends to largely align with High Church Anglican, Orthodox and Assyrian sacramental theology in that denominations like the LCMS seem to stress a real change happening on the altar, with some parishes even making use of Sacring Bells, as one frequently encounters in High Church Anglican parishes, of the Anglo Catholic variety*, the chief difference with Roman Catholicsm, and some of the Anglo Catholic parishes, being the absence of Eucharistic processions and devotions, even though the Reservation of the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle for the communion of the sick and the presanctfied liturgy during Lent is practiced by the Eastern Orthodox and some Oriental Orthodox (historically, all of them, but for reasons I believe are related to Islamic persecution and desecration of the consecrated Eucharist, this no longer happens in the Coptic Orthodox Church or most Syriac churches, however, recently, the Malankara Independent Syrian Church began celebrating a reconstruction of the ancient Syriac presanctified liturgy, known as the Signing of the Chalice (many people including myself believe that the concept of a Presanctified Liturgy originated with Mor Severus of Antioch). Also on that front, the Assyrian Church of the East has recently resumed celebrating the Presanctified Liturgy in some parishes and several Anglo Catholic parishes celebrate it on Good Friday, and there is also a version of it if memory serves among the Antiochian and ROCOR Western Rite Vicarates.

I cannot recall from my prior conversations with you @MarkRohfrietsch whether the LCMS allows reservation of the sacrament for communion of the sick or the Presanctified liturgy on Good Friday, although I know we have discussed it.’

By the way, I attended an LCMS liturgy yesterday and it was very good, although not as beautiful or as solemn as the liturgies celebrated at your parish. Still, it was very proper. They were using the Lutheran Service Book, but apparently until recently this church had used the 1941 hymnal, and I met a congregant who was unhappy about the contemporary language rewording of some of the hymns in the LSB. Now the version I have is contemporary, but I seem to recall you mentioning there was a traditional language version of the Lutheran Service Book available?

Oh, one interesting thing I might mention: I believe the bother of rewriting service books from traditional Ecclesiastical english to contemporary English and vice versa (more vice versa in my case) is about to become a thing of the past, as I have discovered that ChatGPT can do it extremely well. In fact, I even got ChatGPT to generate a liturgy based on typical features of the West Syriac Rite and it did a very good job. It can also translate Aramaic, Classical Armenian and Coptic with good results, which Google Translate cannot do at all, and it is infinitely better at translating Latin.


*Many of these conservative Anglo Catholic parishes in the C of E, and Continuing Anglican parishes in the US, seem to celebrate the Roman Rite in a manner closer to traditional Roman Catholic liturgics than one finds in most Novus Ordo parishes (and as an added plus, the altar in the conservative Anglo Catholic parishes is generally oriented for Ad Orientem celebration only, and the view of it is not obstructed by a second altar added for celebration versus populum in the wake of the 1969 Novus Ordo Missae, which it should be noted is not actually fully consistent with Sacrosanctum Concilium adopted by Vatican II, hence the controversy among many Catholics. Indeed the only liturgical change ordered by Vatican II that strikes me as ill-advised was their decision to delete Prime from the Divine Office, since Prime has historically been one of the most important and popular Hours, so much so that Primers, books containing the words for the office of Prime, were traditionally used to teach people Latin, hence the word remaining in our modern English vocabulary with the meaning of an introductory tutorial on a given subject.

I can understand in part the rationale, given that the Divine Office had Matins, Lauds and Nocturns, but I really think the ideal approach would have been to allow for an alternate, more compact form of the Office, such as that proposed by Cardinal Quinones in the16th century, and adopted in modified form by Archbishop Cranmer as Mattins and Evensong, with spectacular success, for the Church of England managed to accomplish what the Roman church has been struggling with for at least 800 years, that being increasing the public availibility and attendance of the Divine Office, or the Liturgy of the Hours as it is now known, and countering the trend towards it becoming a private devotion among the clergy (conversely, with the Novena, Angelus and various services of the Rosary, we see devotional prayer becoming public liturgical prayer).

Divine Service 3 was a restoration and contains much of the traditional language and form of the 1941 Hymnal; LSB contains Matins, Morning Prayer, Vespers, Evening Prayer and Compline. Morning and evening prayer tend to sound and feel a bit more "Anglican"; our Compline, I have heard the same setting sung in Latin by Nuns in Europe. Very beautiful.

 

[MarkRohfrietsch]

Then based on that it seems like Receptionism would be incompatible with Lutheran sacramental theology, since I don’t see how Luther etching “Hoc est corpus meum” into the table at the failed synod with the Calvinists and Zwinglians can be reconciled with a mere internal change.

Perhaps @FireDragon76 you meant what I erroneously thought Receptionism to be, that being a change in the elements from bread and wine to the body and blood of our Lord occurs when the communicants partake of them, as opposed to on the altar at the Words of Institution or the Epiklesis?

The more liberal Synods may well embrace it, as they embrace a lot of "extra confessional" other stuff.

 

[MarkRohfrietsch]

Do you reject consubstantiation and transubstantiation because they presents objective explanations of the Eucharist rather than leaving the change as a mystery? Or is there another reason?


My understanding is that the ELCA is in full communion with the Episcopalian Church. Perhaps their Eucharistic theology is different from the LCMS and more like the Anglicans?

Yes, the ELCA is at odds with the LCMS/LCC and others.

 

[Paidiske]

I would expect that you and Mark might be less credulous about the existence or possibility of Eucharistic miracles...

I have an open mind. At this point, they are not very important to me personally either way.

*** I don’t know if Mr. Rogers is well known in Australia

Well known enough that I've seen the odd meme. I've never seen the TV programme, though.

 

[FireDragon76]

That seems like the kind of thing my friend @MarkRohfrietsch has objected to, and explains to me why some people have complained about a Calvinistic element in the ELCA (and also in WELS and some other Lutheran churches). Also it seems strange to me that many ELCA churches do not serve the Eucharist every Sunday, despite the fact that the Scandinavian Lutheran churches whose American descendants comprise a large portion of ELCA’s membership have generally been among the more High Church/Evangelical Catholic Lutheran churches, especially the Church of Sweden (I believe the Church of Denmark is considered to be somewhat more Low Church, perhaps influenced by its close proximity to the Prussian Evangelical Church formed by the shotgun marriage of the Prussian Lutherans and Calvinists and the influence of the Calvinist monarchs who favored Calvinist theology; the LCMS and LCC resulted from a desire of Prussian immigrants to the US and Canada desiring to break free of these strictures, and likewise a desire on the part of the Calvinists to separate themselves from Lutherans, resulting in the United Evangelical church which would later merge with the largest of the Congregationalist denominations to form the UCC (many churches had already left by this point and joined what is now the CCCC, to which Park Street Church in Boston, which I greatly love, belongs).

In principle, it seems to me that Eucharistic piety and reverence could be reduced by any Eucharistic theology which allows for the use of bread and wine which has not been specifically consecrated. It runs contrary to my Orthodox-influenced views on the Eucharist, but even when I was a Calvinist and associated with the UCC, I objected to that sort of irreverence. Since my youth I have always believed in the Real Presence, that there is a change and something special happens to the Eucharist when it is validly consecrated.

It has nothing to do with Calvinism. And the reasons that some congregations in the ELCA have monthly communion has more to do with historical circumstances than theology (in the ELCA, only pastors may preside at the altar and say the Words of Institution, and in the past the number of Lutheran pastors were limited- so people got used to infrequent communion).

The bread used in the liturgy has been consecrated, since the Words of Institution consecrated all bread that is to be used in the sacrament. Saying the Words of Institution's effects are limited to a particular time or place risks theological error.

 

[The Liturgist]

It has nothing to do with Calvinism. And the reasons that some congregations in the ELCA have monthly communion has more to do with historical circumstances than theology (in the ELCA, only pastors may preside at the altar and say the Words of Institution, and in the past the number of Lutheran pastors were limited- so people got used to infrequent communion).

The bread used in the liturgy has been consecrated, since the Words of Institution consecrated all bread that is to be used in the sacrament. Saying the Words of Institution's effects are limited to a particular time or place risks theological error.

I attended an ELCA service on Easter Sunday in Solvang in 2011 in which the extremely liberal Finnish pastor, who liked to joke that he didn’t even speak Danish and was at a loss as to why he was assigned to the Danish-American resort town, did not serve the Eucharist, but he did preach a sermon in which he suggested among other things the possibility that Christ our God was married to another human such as St. Mary Magdalene, a speculation I found deeply offensive, although I loved the congregation and I love that Lutheran church, I just greatly object to some views held and some liturgical decisions made by the former pastor in question, such as not serving the Eucharist on Sunday. However, I loved the selection of hymns, the congregational singing and organ music, and everything else about the liturgy, which used the Lutheran Book of Worship, the Green hymnal, which I love, unlike the 2006 ELCA hymnal, which in my opinoin urgently needs to be replaced with something more respectful of traditional members of ELCA, lest more parishes leave for the NALC and disunity be further perpetuated.

 

[The Liturgist]

I have an open mind. At this point, they are not very important to me personally either way.

Well known enough that I've seen the odd meme. I've never seen the TV programme, though.

You should check it out. Some of the memes are a bit mean spirited and Mr. Rogers was anything but mean. I would stress he was rather nicer than I am, and I suspect more tolerant and open minded to the point where occasionally I would be unable to completely agree with him, but he was a great Christian pastor and is probably numbered among the saints. If an ecumenical Synaxarion is compiled, I would campaign for adding him, as well as DIetrich Bonhoeffer, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Dom Gregory Dix, Rev. Percy Dearmer, Dr. James Kennedy, John and Charles Wesley, Soren Kierkegaard, Rev. John Hunter, Lancelot Andrewes, Jonathan Edwards and William Laud, just to name a few.

 

[MarkRohfrietsch]

It has nothing to do with Calvinism. And the reasons that some congregations in the ELCA have monthly communion has more to do with historical circumstances than theology (in the ELCA, only pastors may preside at the altar and say the Words of Institution, and in the past the number of Lutheran pastors were limited- so people got used to infrequent communion).

The bread used in the liturgy has been consecrated, since the Words of Institution consecrated all bread that is to be used in the sacrament. Saying the Words of Institution's effects are limited to a particular time or place risks theological error.

Some of that same sentiment can be found within the membership of confessional Lutheranism. Lots of lame excuses are given; "it's not special if we do it all the time"; "I like Matins and want to do it instead"; "the service is too long, and we want time for coffee hour after service"... etc, etc, etc. You get the idea.

Our Pastor accepted a call to an other parish so we are vacant. We have a great vacancy Pastor, but because of his own parish and service schedule, we are doing ours on Saturday mornings.

Our previous Pastor and I have established a monthly service at a retirement home (we do a few of these) the first Saturday of each month in the afternoon. Our vacancy Pastor is continuing this. Our organist and her husband usually attend as they have a nice little chapel with an organ, and we set up a nice little altar resplendent with a beautiful old crucifix that they have there and two candles. We set up so we have just enough hosts and wine. As we were setting up, I asked the organist and her husband if they would be communing with us. He replied "No, we communed this morning, we don't need it right now.

Pastor was on his "A" game and promptly replied "I don't know about you, but I need all the grace and forgiveness I can get".

Both Pastor and I communed twice that day.

When we go out and visit individuals, we also commune each visit with each member.

 

[The Liturgist]

Some of that same sentiment can be found within the membership of confessional Lutheranism. Lots of lame excuses are given; "it's not special if we do it all the time"; "I like Matins and want to do it instead"; "the service is too long, and we want time for coffee hour after service"... etc, etc, etc. You get the idea.

Our Pastor accepted a call to an other parish so we are vacant. We have a great vacancy Pastor, but because of his own parish and service schedule, we are doing ours on Saturday mornings.

Our previous Pastor and I have established a monthly service at a retirement home (we do a few of these) the first Saturday of each month in the afternoon. Our vacancy Pastor is continuing this. Our organist and her husband usually attend as they have a nice little chapel with an organ, and we set up a nice little altar resplendent with a beautiful old crucifix that they have there and two candles. We set up so we have just enough hosts and wine. As we were setting up, I asked the organist and her husband if they would be communing with us. He replied "No, we communed this morning, we don't need it right now.

Pastor was on his "A" game and promptly replied "I don't know about you, but I need all the grace and forgiveness I can get".

Both Pastor and I communed twice that day.

When we go out and visit individuals, we also commune each visit with each member.

I admire your Eucharistic piety. Now interestingly, in Eastern Orthodoxy, there is a prevalent belief with Patristic backing which was promoted by the likes of St. John of Kronstadt, St. John Maximovitch of ROCOR, and Fr. Alexander Schmemann, that encourages frequent reception, indeed reception as frequently as possible, and in antiquity, the Presanctified Liturgy was originally introduced* to facilitate high frequency reception even in Lent, since the view of the Early Church, the regular Divine Liturgy is too celebratory to be celebrated on certain days of penance, which is why historically every ancient church had a presanctified liturgy, although they did not agree on which days it was to be used, with Rome for example at some point deciding to only use the Mass of the Presanctified on Good Friday, indeed this may have always been its use. Later, these were lost in the Oriental Orthodox and Assyrian churches, but the Assyrian Church of the East and some Syriac Orthodox are bringing them back. I suspect the Armenian practice of celebrating the Liturgy, or Soorp Badarak, in the Armenian church, with the curtain closed from the start of Lent until Palm Sunday with only the celebrant communicating is the result of the loss of this practice combined with the Latinization that is evident in the mitres worn by Armernian bishops, the reading of John 1:1-14 at the end of the liturgy, and all Armenian anaphorae and their presanctified liturgy falling into disuse, except for the Anaphora of St. Athanasius (unrelated to the Ethiopian anaphora of the same name), which is a very beautiful anaphora, being an abbreviated version of the anaphora of the Divine Liturgy of St. James.

Related to this conceptually I think is the prevailing view in the Eastern Orthodox Church and I believe the Coptic Orthodox Church that the Eucharist can be celebrated only once per celebrant, per altar, per day, per communicant. This in the Eastern Orthodox Church also relates to the Typika service, which can also be celebrated without a priest, but with a priest is appointed in the Typikon on the morning of Christmas Eve and certain other days where a Vesperal Divine Liturgy is appointed, and this service, like the Anglican Ante-Communion, the Service of the Word as I think it is called in the Lutheran Service Book, and the Roman Catholic Missa Sicca and Missa Venatoris historically used by Carthusians and by hunters respectively, all of which amount to the same thing - the liturgy with the propers of the day but no Eucharist.

The Syriac Orthodox celebrate the Divine Liturgy at Paschal Vigils at midnight like the Eastern Orthodox but also celebrate it the following Morning. Conversely, the Syriac Orthodox only permit celebrating the liturgy on Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and feast days, like Holy Thursday, and do not celebrate it during the Rogation of the Ninevites nor on Great and Holy Friday as far as I am aware (@coorliose might be able to confirm this and also confirm if this practice is specific to the Suroye in the Middle East or also exists among the Syriac Orthodox members of the Nasrani, or St. Thomas Christians, in India, established by the Holy Apostle Thomas prior to his receiving the Crown of Martyrdom through the homicidal rampage an enraged javelin-wielding Maharaja in 53 AD in Kerala. Later it seems highly likely his relics were brought to Seleucia-Cstesiphon, for Patriarch Ignatius Zakka Iwas of blessed memory believed he had found them in the wall of a church in the replacement city of Baghdad after the movement of the Euphrates forced the city that had replaced Babylon to be replaced once more, this time by the current city of Baghdad, which is almost on top of ancient Babylon (I wonder if Babel itself was in a slightly different location than the Babylon in which the Jews were taken captive by Nebuchadnezzar, for the city has a history of relocating on at least two occasions when the river sustaining it changed course; with modern technology this might not happen again, provided Iraq can regain stability after iSIL and the Islamist insurgency following the removal of Saddam.

I myself think that a vespers, which can be served at any time of the day in theory, since it has the effect of changing the liturgical day, so that if one celebrates Vespers on Sunday, when it is over, it is Monday, should ideally be celebrated in between Eucharists if two of them are needed on the same day, and I would venture to propose, without wishing to appear to tell you how to run your church, but rather as a friendly suggestion since I recall discussing with you on several occasions your immense fondness for the Divine Office in the Lutheran Service Book, that you, while assuming that you do not embrace the rationale I have for doing so, consider using this as an excuse for punctuating the two Masses you serve, by gracing either the Nursing Home or your parish, depending on who would appreciate it more, with Vespers, Compline or Evening Prayer (the latter two imply or contain Vespers). And if no one was enthusiastic enough to do it I suppose if you and your pastor carpool, one of you could read the service to the other. I wish I had someone to read the Divine Office to me while I was driving. Indeed I believe I mentioned previously that in my own ministry it has been my practice to do precisely this.

*It probably was introduced by the Oriental Orthodox St. Severus of Antioch, because the oldest records we have of it are in connection with him**,, probably originating in a form resembling the Presanctified Liturgy of St James, which ROCOR included in their recent superb critical edition in English and Church Slavonic of the Byzantine form of the Divine Liturgy of St. James, which resembles the Syriac Orthodox form but includes the famous hymn Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent (I do not know if this is included in the Presanctified version of the liturgy as I have not yet had time to read the entire liturgikon). This version was later supplanted by the Presanctified Liturgy of St. Gregory the Dialogist, known in the West as Pope St. Gregory I, the Great, who began his career as a legate to Constantinople and introduced Gregorian Chant based on the eight mode Byzantine Chant (which I believe Milan was probably already using in their own distinctive form as part of the Ambrosian Rite, since the history of St. Ambrose says he introduced antiphonal singing during a 19 day vigil held with his most faithful flock in a basillica that for purely political reasons the otherwise extremely pious Emperor St. Justinian wanted to give over to the Arians), and it was also used by the Roman Church on Good Friday, which is the only aliturgical day in the Byzantine Rite, until the ill-advised revision of the Missal by Pope Pius XII in 1955, when the services in the Paschal Triduum were radically altered in such a way as to destroy their hitherto close resemblance to the equivalent services in the Byzantine Rite).

**Mor Severus I should add also is the most likely candidate to have authored the hymn Ho Monogenes that many Eastern Orthodox attribute to Emperor Justinian, which makes no sense because Justinian is reviled by the Oriental Orthodox for his persecution of the Syriac Orthodox, which followed a failed reconciliation in which Justinian embraced several aspects of Oriental Orthodox theology which have since become common in Eastern Orthodox, such as Theopaschitism, but anathematizing Theodore of Mopsuestia was ultimately not enough to bring about a reconciliation). The Syriac Orthodox sing Ho Monogenes at the very beginning of their Divine Liturgy, and the Armenians sing it, like the Eastern Orthodox, following the Second Antiphon, and the Coptic (and probably the Ethiopian Orthodox) sing it at a climactic moment on Good Friday.