Friday, March 19, 2004 AD
"Holy Communion or Unholy Chaos?"
Came across a very helpful article on the Modern Reformation website by Paul McCain, entitled Holy Communion or Unholy Chaos? The Ecumenical Movement's Use of the Lord's Supper. He looks at how close(d) communion - far from being some narrow-minded idea cooked up by a few Lutherans - is in fact the historic position of the Church. The Church's teaching has always been that the Lord's Supper is an expression of our true unity in the faith, not (as promoted by the Ecumenical Movement) a means of papering over the cracks to establish an apparent "unity" in which doctrinal error is tolerated as "legitimate diversity".
McCain writes:
It is indeed tragic and unfortunate when true Christians cannot commune together. No-one wants that situation to continue. But the true tragedy is doctrinal division and error: and trying to use the Lord's Supper to side-step that tragedy will only make - has already made, is already making - matters worse, as it sends out such clear signals that doctrinal division and error do not really matter.
Funnily enough, one of the best expressions of this can be found in the Catechism of the (Roman) Catholic Church:
McCain writes:
How is it possible that the most holy night of our Lord's life has given rise to dissension and disunity in Christendom? How can it be that our Lord's Sacred Meal has become the cause of turmoil, confusion and a splintering of fellowship among Christians who trace their theological ancestry to Rome, Wittenberg, Geneva or Zurich?Read the full article here.
What should the Church's response to this disunity be? There are two options. The first option is the response of historic Christianity: To lament the disunity, to pray and to work for agreement, but until genuine agreement is reached, to avoid communing together in order to avoid giving expression to a unity that does not yet exist. The second option is the response of the Ecumenical Movement: To assert that in spite of a lack of unity in the confession of the true faith, Christian churches commune together. The Ecumenical Movement's use of the Lord's Supper as a tool toward union has turned Holy Communion into an unholy chaos.
It is indeed tragic and unfortunate when true Christians cannot commune together. No-one wants that situation to continue. But the true tragedy is doctrinal division and error: and trying to use the Lord's Supper to side-step that tragedy will only make - has already made, is already making - matters worse, as it sends out such clear signals that doctrinal division and error do not really matter.
Funnily enough, one of the best expressions of this can be found in the Catechism of the (Roman) Catholic Church:
The more painful the experience of the divisions in the Church which break the common participation in the table of the Lord, the more urgent are our prayers to the Lord that the time of complete unity among all who believe in him may return.Even if we disagree with Rome on what "complete unity" means and involves, that is still an excellent summary of the position.
