Communion at a Protestant church

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Again, they don’t call themselves “The Protestant Church” they call themselves ___ Church, with Protestant in their description. I’m guessing since they are not part of a bigger group, the communion is just a communion in their community. I’m sorry if it’s unusual, I can’t changr what they do or believe.
 
susanbherald said:
Again, they don’t call themselves “The Protestant Church” they call themselves ___ Church, with Protestant in their description. I’m guessing since they are not part of a bigger group, the communion is just a communion in their community. I’m sorry if it’s unusual, I can’t changr what they do or believe.
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I agree, neither of us can.
And please stop apologizing. You’ve done nothing to apologize for.
 
Lutheran seminarian here.

Your friend is mistaken. We most certainly do not teach Consubstatiation. To us, it is as erroneous as Transubstantiation for the reasons Jon stated above.

We believe in what Luther called the Sacramental Union. Plain and simple, the Real Presence with no further explanation.
 
I just can’t wrap my head around why Luther rejected John chapter 6.
 
steido01 said:
Plain and simple, the Real Presence with no further explanation.
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Missed you.

So, no Ecumenical Council was needed to further explain the Dogma of the Trinity to Arius et. al., using philosophical language not found in Scripture such as ‘homousios’?
 
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Actually at a lot of open table non Catholic Christian Churches taking communion is taken as meaning that you love the Lord Jesus and share in his suffering. It’s more about relationship than pure doctrine
 
Lutherans do have consubstantiation. Lilypadrees is correct. I was Lutheran most of my life, which has been a pretty long time.
 
I was a life-long Lutheran till recently. You are 100 percent correct, lilypadrees.
 
When I was in high school I was with a performance group that performed at an Episcopal church and then attended a service afterward. Our group included people im their mid-teens through retirees.

There was communion. I didn’t think it would be right for me to receive, but EVERYONE in the group got in line. There were probably around 30 of us, at least a couple other Catholics and a couple Jews, too.

It was just a mass movement of people and being a kid I didn’t know what to do and I went along with it. I felt weird about it but never really realized it could be a sin until recently. I’m 51, the way.
 
I am afraid you’re mistaken. Both Consubstantiation and Transubstantiation are explicitly rejected by the Lutheran Confessions. If you learned one of those doctrines in a Lutheran church, your pastor was not teaching Lutheran beliefs.

I wrote this post some time ago to help folks understand this. For a brief rundown:
  • Transubstantiation holds that the entire “substance” of the bread and wine is changed into Christ’s Body and Blood, until only the “accidents” of bread (taste, consistency, color, etc.) remain. This is the Roman Catholic understanding.
  • Consubstantiation reasons that the bread and the wine and the Body and the Blood are united in some way that, more or less, creates some new, third substance. I don’t know of a single sect today that actually believes in Consubstantiation, though even some Lutherans have been duped into using the term by Calvinists (who originally made up the term to confuse Lutherans into adopting Calvin’s view) Luckily, even when Lutherans get duped into using the word, they don’t usually adopt the beliefs behind it, thank God! Consubstantiation has been explained as:
    • As an actual creation of a new, third substance
    • As impanation - where the substances don’t change, but Christ’s presence is substantially stored in the substance of the bread and wine
    • As incorporation - where the substances don’t change, but Christ’s presence is mingled into the substance of the bread and wine
    • In countless other messy, over-thought interminglings of the “substances” and “accidents” in an array of almost comical combinations.
  • Sacramental Union , which Lutherans actually believe, does not attempt to reason out the miracle of the Sacrament of the Altar. It simply trusts in the mystery of Christ’s Words; that He does what He says He does. That He truly, physically gives Himself for us for the forgiveness of sins in (and with and under and in every inadequate human way of understanding) the bread and the wine. Similar to the Eastern Orthodox view.
 
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susanbherald said:
They said we had to go to an “other faith” thing, we get information later but I’m doing it early. I’m sure they will address it
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Is there a Jewish temple where you could attend a Shabbat service. I attended one over the Summer, and could see the origins of the Mass and worship there.
 
I’d just like to share this link for those who mistakenly think Lutherans believe in Consubstantiation:


Please read it and understand that Lutherans explicitly reject Aristotelian terms like “substances” and “accidents.” They simply don’t develop the doctrine of the Real Presence in that way. The Lutheran understanding is, well, frankly more rudimentary. It can be compared to those Orthodox who do not necessarily use the term ‘Transubstantiation.’ If Lutherans were absolutely forced to adopt an Aristotelian theory for the Lord’s Supper, many might very well go for Transubstantiation (frankly, it’s not even a secondary or tertiary concern to Lutherans on its own. It only gets some attention because of its association with the Roman Catholic understanding of the Mass as a sacrifice, to which Lutherans object). But Lutheran thinking simply doesn’t go in an Aristotelian direction.

Friends, please be careful about how you describe others’ beliefs. I’ve seen Protestants absurdly claim that Catholics “worship Mary” or “pray to statues.” We know this is untrue, but to the uneducated observer, it may appear to be the case. This is much the same for the Lutheran view of the Lord’s Supper. If you grow up thinking Aristotelian-ly, Lutherans might (if misunderstood) appear to believe in Consubstantiation. But they most assuredly do not.

I am happy to provide 501 years of sources should anyone require it.
 
That’s correct. These were terms that the church catholic, gathered in ecumenical council, used to describe the Trinity— and inadequately, at that! (Do not forget that the Trinity is a mystery and our preferred explanations will always fall incomplete!) Accordingly, it does not follow that a different situation on a different topic in a different era should be expected to use the same terms and formulas. Cultures change. Philosophies come and go. Only the Truth remains.

And so nothing can be divorced from its context and remain properly understood. Frankly, it must be considered that had the church developed in some other culture (say, the Far East, where the Buddhism-influenced culture is less concerned with the “being” and “essence” of Greek Thought than it is with “desire” and “suffering”), it would very likely formulate the Truth of the Trinity in a drastically different way, yet no less compatible with Truth. Perhaps in a more relational way than Greek labels permit.

This is comparable to the Lutheran’s understanding of the Supper to the Roman Catholic’s. They’re speaking different languages, yet professing the same Truth: the Real Presence of Christ.

This is why Lutherans frankly see “Transubstantiation” as a minor concern. Not even secondary or tertiary. In fact, the only objections Lutherans really have to it is that it can, in some instances, be understood to lend credence to the idea that the Mass is a sacrifice. Yet even here, there is some agreement (see section 1b and 2.).
 
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steido01
Code: 
    November 1
I am afraid you’re mistaken. Both Consubstantiation and Transubstantiation are explicitly rejected by the Lutheran Confessions. If you learned one of those doctrines in a Lutheran church, your pastor was not teaching Lutheran beliefs.

I wrote this post some time ago to help folks understand this. For a brief rundown:
  • Transubstantiation holds that the entire “substance” of the bread and wine is changed into Christ’s Body and Blood, until only the “accidents” of bread (taste, consistency, color, etc.) remain. This is the Roman Catholic understanding.
  • Consubstantiation reasons that the bread and the wine and the Body and the Blood are united in some way that, more or less, creates some new, third substance. I don’t know of a single sect today that actually believes in Consubstantiation, though even some Lutherans have been duped into using the term by Calvinists (who originally made up the term to confuse Lutherans into adopting Calvin’s view) Luckily, even when Lutherans get duped into using the word, they don’t usually adopt the beliefs behind it, thank God! Consubstantiation has been explained as:
    • As an actual creation of a new, third substance
    • As impanation - where the substances don’t change, but Christ’s presence is substantially stored in the substance of the bread and wine
    • As incorporation - where the substances don’t change, but Christ’s presence is mingled into the substance of the bread and wine
    • In countless other messy, over-thought interminglings of the “substances” and “accidents” in an array of almost comical combinations.
  • Sacramental Union , which Lutherans actually believe, does not attempt to reason out the miracle of the Sacrament of the Altar. It simply trusts in the mystery of Christ’s Words; that He does what He says He does. That He truly, physically gives Himself for us for the forgiveness of sins in (and with and under and in every inadequate human way of understanding) the bread and the wine. Similar to the Eastern Orthodox view.
 
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When I was a Lutheran, I don’t remember the word " Consubstantiation" being used. But it came to about the same thing. As the pastor–and again a later pastor, when I was older–explained, “It’s both. It certainly has become the body and blood of Jesus, but you can see and feel that it is still a wafer and wine. It is both at once.”

Also, Lutherans do use wine, not grape juice. There seems to be some misunderstanding about that, too.

<<the bread and the wine and the Body and the Blood are united in some way that, more or less, creates some new, third substance>> No, that doesn’t sound like anything I heard as a Lutheran. I guess you could say we were tap dancing around the edges of that, but there was never a “third substance” mentioned. And neither was the word “consubstantiation” mentioned.

Both of my old pastors have passed on, so I can’t look them up and ask them for clarification here.

One thing you don’t hear much of among Lutherans is the concept of other religions getting “duped.” We note that nobody has come back from the other side to tell us how they fare, or to tell us that Christ personally told them this or that, so we like to think that some of it is just unknowable in this world.
 
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It is absolutely fine to recieve Communion at a Protestant church… if you are a Protestant.
 
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