An article on the Christian Post website and picked up by RealClearReligion is an in-your-face attack on the Lutheran theology of the Lord’s Supper. The thing is, the author, Dan Delzell, is the pastor of Wellspring Lutheran Church in Papillion, Nebraska.
The church website says that it rejects membership in any synods, as being hierarchical like Roman Catholics, but it is affiliated with the Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (LCMC), which broke away from the ELCA for being too liberal. The LCMC says it holds to the Augsburg Confession and Luther’s Small Catechism, both of which have clear teaching on the Lord’s Supper.
Here is Rev. Delzell’s article: The Lord’s Supper Helps Christians ‘Keep it Real’, Christian News.
It is so full of misunderstandings and theological bloopers that one does not know where to begin. I know, of course, that other theological traditions reject the Lutheran understanding of Christ’s real bodily presence in the Supper (not “consubstantiation”!) so that the bread and wine are the true body and blood of our Savior given for the forgiveness of sin. I don’t, however, expect a Lutheran pastor to reject this teaching or to misunderstand it in such a spectacular way. In what sense, I wonder, can he still consider himself a Lutheran?
How would you answer what he says, setting the record straight for the readers of the Christian Post?
