A Reply to the Texas District Paper on Internet Communion
Here is the video of the recent three-martini Texas District convention.
Someone shared this with me as a chance to respond to the “Bible Study” that begins at roughly 1:09 and ends at 2:04. The official title is “The Church in a Post-Covid World,” but that’s not really what it is about. It is, in fact, an advocacy and apologia for “internet communion.”
The presenter is the Rev. Zach McIntosh of Concordia Lutheran Church in San Antonio. He seems like a nice, bright guy. And I have to say that I like the fact that he’s a McIntosh. His Highlander ancestors probably fought with mine in the wars of Scottish independence with a confederation known as the Clan of Cats. I have to give him props for that, especially as we Celts are dreadfully outnumbered by Germans in our synod. Having said that, the cuisine in Texas and Louisiana beat anything cooked up by Scots or Germans.
That said, I have to give him a demerit for lecturing about Holy Communion (part of his argument for internet communion is the profound importance of the Holy Sacrament) given that his congregation only celebrates it on the first Sunday of the month. I cannot even grasp it. Not counting holidays, that’s twelve times a year. That sounds like starvation rations to me. My little congregation offers the Holy Sacrament more than a hundred times a year. Perhaps Pastor McIntosh can give a presentation to his own congregation on Article 24 and the importance of the Holy Eucharist and its frequent reception. I notice that other advocates of home-internet communion tend to be pastors of churches that practice infrequent communion. I have no explanation for this.
All that said, Pastor McIntosh is open and honest that this is indeed a position paper more than a Bible Study. He presents it based on four “theses.” A thesis is part of an argument. And during the course of his talk, he openly admits that the real question behind the paper, that is the real thesis statement is: “Is it possible for a local church to rightly participate together in a livestreamed Word and Sacrament service while remaining in their individual homes?” And he is open about his answer: Yes, he is “sympathetic” to the idea of a livestreamed “Word and Sacrament” service. He also admits that the service of the Word is not really problematic, but the service of the Sacrament is the actual controversial issue. And that it is.
His four theses are:
The Church is Invisible.
The Church is Confessional.
The Church is Inter-Spatial.
The Church is Fraternal.
The Church is Invisible
This is really nothing more than the assertion that faith is invisible. He cites Eph 5:33, AC 7&8, he quotes Luther using the term “invisible,” and cites 1 Cor 6:19 and 1 Pet 2:5.
The Church is Confessional
He explains the development of the ecumenical creeds and the Lutheran confessions. He argues that although the Bible, Creeds, and Confessions never address remote electronic worship, we can use these resources to discern whether we should or should not make use of such technology. One statement that he makes is “There was no Mass when the New Testament was written.” This is simply untrue. Jesus established the Lord’s Supper “on the night when He was betrayed.” St. Paul, in 1 Cor 11, explains that the Words of Institution were already a tradition that was handed over to him when he was writing the letter in about 55 AD. Indeed, the Sacrament of the Altar was being celebrated by the apostles on a weekly basis very early on, according to Acts 2:42, when none of the New Testament had even yet been written. Pastor McIntosh refers to this very verse later on.
This thesis that “The Church is Confessional” is really just a premise to use the confessions to make arguments regarding administration of the Sacrament. For some reason, he omitted the longest treatment of the Divine Service and Holy Communion in the Book of Concord: Article 24 in the Augsburg Confession and the Apology.
The Church is Inter-Spatial
This is where the rubber meets the road, as they used to say in Akron, Ohio. This word “inter-spatial” is a neologism coined by the presenter just to make the obvious point that the Church is both universal and local. He addresses the universality of the Church by appealing to the Una Sancta of the Nicene Creed. More accurately, the Church is “catholic.” The word “Universal” is a weak translation of καθολικός, which comes from two words: κατά (kata - according to) and ὅλος (holos - the whole).
Catholicity not only means that the Church is more than simply the local congregation, it means that the Church is una owing to a wholesomeness and fullness of doctrine. And it is ironic that he should appeal to the Church’s catholicity to argue for communion celebrated by either laymen speaking the verba, or the remote words of a pastor who is not present for the consecration. This is as un-catholic as you can get. It is sectarian, as no historic communion that confesses the Real Presence ever had, or has, practiced this, or confessed a doctrine that allows it.
Pastor McIntosh points out the both/and nature of the universality and the locality of the Church by comparing it to an interstate highway that is both within states, and crosses state lines. I think this illustration betrays him, as we are talking about roads that actually exist in space and time. You cannot be on Interstate-10 and not exist somewhere physically. If I’m in a Zoom session in Iowa, then I’m not on I-10. Roads are incarnational. The fact that the road is in California doesn’t negate the fact that when I’m driving to Baton Rouge, I’m in Louisiana.
He uses the term “ecclesiis sanctorum” from Jerome’s Latin of 1 Cor 14:33. He translates this as “multiple churches with many holy ones.” “Sanctorum” is a genitive plural. It is better translated as “churches of the saints,” as does the ESV. Of course, there are multiple churches in the sense of local congregations, even as there is one holy catholic and apostolic Church (una sancta). This reality has nothing to do with internet communion.
He tries to argue for internet communion based on Acts 2:42, 46-47 - “breaking bread in their homes.” Of course, prior to Constantine, nearly all Christian worship was conducted in homes. There is no indication that these services were lay-led, or that the pastors somehow conducted services from afar, perhaps by epistle or messenger or carrier pigeon. And local churches meet in homes to this very day, including parishes of our sister church body, the Siberian Evangelical Lutheran Church. I visited one such congregation in 2015, with a Divine Service held in a parishioner’s apartment. But the Mass was officiated by ordained clergymen who drove a long way to lead the service. It would be unthinkable to our sister church body to conduct a Divine Service over Zoom, or to just have the laity speak the verba over bread and wine themselves - in spite of the reality that it takes a lot of time and money to physically travel. And it was the same way in the LCMS’s frontier days.
Pastor McIntosh cites Luther giving assent to meeting “alone in a house somewhere… to baptize and to receive the sacrament” (AE:53:63-64). But the larger context is not lay-led communion or allowing pastors to somehow consecrate from afar. This quotation comes from The German Mass and Order of Service (1526). In it, Luther identifies three types of “divine service or mass.”
The first is the Evangelical Latin Mass, to be used in a parochial setting where the people speak Latin. The second is the German Mass, which is to be used for “untrained lay folk” who do not speak Latin. And then there is the “third kind of service,” which:
should be a truly evangelical order and should not be held in a public place for all sorts of people. But those who want to be Christians in earnest and who profess the gospel with hand and mouth should sign their names and meet alone in a house somewhere to pray, to read, to baptize, to receive the sacrament, and to do other Christian works. According to this order, those who do not lead Christian lives should be known, reproved, corrected, cast out, or excommunicated, according to the rule of Christ, Matthew 18. Here one could also solicit benevolent gifts to be willingly given and distributed to the poor, according to St. Paul’s example, II Corinthians 9. Here would be no need for much and elaborate singing. Here one could set up a brief and neat order for baptism and the sacrament and center everything on the Word, prayer, and love. Here one would need a good short catechism on the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Our Father.
Nowhere does Luther advocate lay-led or remotely-led clerical ministry of Sacraments. He is describing a house-church - obviously where there is no Evangelical parish church to attend. This was certainly the case in many places during the Reformation. Luther is describing what we would call today, a “church plant,” and avers that “the rules and regulations would soon be ready.” In fact, Luther goes on to say that church planting is not his particular thing, but “if I should be requested to do it, and could not refuse with a good conscience, I should gladly do my part and help as best I can.” He adds, “In the meanwhile, the two above-mentioned orders of service [i.e. the Latin and German parochial Masses] must suffice.” He also warns of the risks of such a church, that care should be taken lest it “turn into a sect.”
Pastor McIntosh does finally admit the real crux of the problem: “There’s not a pastor there.” So how does a pastor give care and oversight when he’s not in the same room? He acknowledges the limits of pastoral care even in the same room, such as the pastor’s inability to know about all people who should be excluded from the Christian congregation because of wickedness. He points to St. Paul’s giving pastoral care remotely. And here, I think Pastor McIntosh sinks his own boat.
Giving remote pastoral care is nothing new. But let’s consider how technology has or has not been used. We have audio and video livestreaming today, but we have had the ability to send remote visual and audio images over the air since the 1940s. The LCMS was actually a pioneer in television programming. But no one in decades past, in the Golden Age of television, ever encouraged people at home in the viewing audience to put bread and wine on a TV tray while a televised pastor “teleconsecrated” the elements. There were services for shut-ins, but no suggestion of some kind of “private Mass” with “home communion” over the airwaves.
And before TV, we had radio, the technology of which predates the 20th century. And yet not even during World War I and the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic was anyone suggesting the use of the pastor’s transmitted radio voice to “teleconsecrate” remote elements. Before radio was the telephone. And even before the telephone, dating back to 1844, Samuel Morse found a way to encode words over telegraph lines. And again, not even in remote frontier locations did anyone even dream of having a pastor send a consecratory telegram or phone in the Words of Institution.
And long before electronic communication, we had pen and ink technology and mail delivery. And this is where Pastor McIntosh defeats his own argument. St. Paul indeed provided pastoral care remotely by means of epistles. But not even in 1 Cor 11 does the apostle ask that the verba be read by a layman over bread and wine outside of the pastor’s sight and control. Rather, Paul preaches the Word and gives catechetical instruction in writing. Baptisms and Eucharists were conducted by “elders” (presbyters) who were appointed for pastoral service in the local churches.
The Church is Fraternal
Pastor McIntosh’s last thesis has nothing to do with the argument other than to try to prevent argument. He uses AC 26:44 “Diversity does not violate the unity of the Church” to argue that whether one uses internet communion or not, this doesn’t affect our unity. He said, “False doctrine, yeah, that’s a problem… but not every diverse practice is evidence of doctrinal disagreement.” And that is true. But it is equally true that not every expression of diversity is evidence of correct doctrine. He should not assume that internet communion is as indifferent as the color of the walls in the parish hall. We are dealing with the consecration of the elements. That is not a matter of “anything goes.” Contextually, Article 26 is dealing with diversity in fasting practices, not with consecrating the elements.
This is a very different matter.
In his conclusion, Pastor McIntosh says, “It’s so important to continue to offer, whether it’s in a cathedral or in a condo, the gifts of God to the people of God” [including] “the reception of the sacraments.” Yes, this is true. And parish pastors typically celebrate Masses in church buildings on Sundays, and often during the week at hospital beds for patients and at kitchen or living room tables for shut-ins. Yes, we do this both “in the cathedral and in the condo,” so to speak. But the point is that we pastors celebrate and consecrate, we preach, baptize, and absolve as circumstances dictate. We don’t just tell the shut-ins to commune themselves. We don’t just facetime them and say “magic words” while they hold the phone over bread and wine. That would be to treat the consecration as ex opere operato.
Pastor McIntosh’s presentation overlooks and omits all of the potential problems of remote consecration - assuming that it is even valid. But let’s say that it is valid for the sake of argument. There are unintended consequences.
For example, if I’m consecrating at the altar, and I misspeak a word, or get tongue-tied, I can simply repeat the verba. This is what celebrants are instructed to do based on the fact that we have been doing this for nearly two millennia, and stuff happens. But what happens if, unbeknownst to the remote celebrant, the Zoom transmission gets garbled, and the pastor’s voice begins to sound like ET on Quaaludes? That happens all the time. So what then? What happens if only part of the verba are heard and the connection drops? What do we tell the viewing audience at home to do with the bread and wine? Are they, or are they not, the body and blood of Christ? It matters. It really does!
And how can the pastor be a “steward of the mysteries” while he isn’t there? The steward was an ancient office dedicated to table service. The steward could water down a diner’s wine if he were getting inebriated, or even cut him off. That’s because he is able to watch and listen and make changes based on feedback. Pastors do something similar when they officiate. They may need to consecrate more hosts, or break some in half. They may need to get stingy with the Lord’s blood at the last table, or they may need to consecrate more. A theoretical remote communion separates the pastor from his vocation of stewardship. He cannot say what is being consecrated and what is not. In my practice, I count out how many hosts I need and only consecrate those in the paten on the corporal. The rest in the ciborium remain unconsecrated. I consecrate only the wine in the chalice, not every drop in the cruet. So I know what is the Lord’s body and blood, and what is not.
If I were not in the room, how would I do this? Is the wine in the glasses on the table the only ones consecrated? What about the bottle on the table? If there is a leftover piece of toast from breakfast on the table, is that now consecrated? These are not inconsequential questions. The Eucharist is not do-it-yourself project. Jesus established an office of steward.
And how is the reliquiae taken care of afterwards? And if an accidental desecration happens, why should we put the burden on laymen, perhaps miles away, when we pastors are the stewards?
And all of the above problems grant the assumption that remote consecration is possible, that this is a valid consecration. One glaring problem is that the pastor’s voice never actually comes into contact with the elements. What comes out of a speaker is a simulation of the pastor’s voice that fools your brain into thinking that it is his voice - not unlike the RCA Victor dog. In the same way, a Zoom image or a photograph is not actually the person, but is rather a simulation of that person that gives an appearance of that person’s presence. Da Vinci’s Last Supper is only a painting. It is not really Jesus and the apostles. I argue that because of this reality, it is physically impossible to consecrate the elements remotely. And even if it were possible, it would still open up a Pandora’s Box of problems.
And this is why we don’t tear down Chesterton’s Fence. This is why we don’t do sectarian things. This is why catholicity is more than just “universality” in the sense that local manifestations of Church are to be found hither and yon.
In times past, there have been wars, plagues, tyrannical rulers, and natural disasters that have impeded the ability of pastors to preach and administer Sacraments. We do what we can with our human limitations, and we accept those limitations as part of our humanity - the same humanity that our Lord Jesus Christ took on at His incarnation. Unlike the technocratic Klaus Schwabs of the world, we don’t look to transcend those human limitations by means of turning ourselves into transhumanistic cyborgs.
The Church is indeed invisible in the sense that faith is not seen by the naked eye. But the Church is also visible, as she gathers around a visible preacher even as faith comes by hearing, heard from someone preaching, one who has been sent (Romans 10). The Church is visible as the administration of the Sacraments is visible, as real, physical bread and wine and water occupy space and time, and we experience them with our bodies by means of our senses. Pastor McIntosh only spoke of the invisible Church, not the visible Church. We must consider both halves of the paradox to get the full picture.
The Church is indeed confessional, and our confessions address the question of who is charged with consecrating the elements (AC 14) and how that is to be done (AC 24, Ap 24). The Church is both local and trans-local - as evidenced by the fact that instead of a single temple, we have altars all over the world with the miraculous presence of God resting on them. And Holy Communion is not called “the Sacrament of the Altar” by our confessions for nothing. The elements are consecrated by the Word by means of one authorized to proclaim that Word - not just any person, and not by a simulacrum of a pastor’s voice. And indeed, the Church is fraternal. It is an act of fratricide to introduce a divisive, sectarian, ahistorical practice in the Church that leaves people in doubt and scandalized, not to mention leaving behind a host of other chaotic consequences in its wake.
At the conclusion of Pastor McIntosh’s “Bible Study,” President Newman pointed out that there just so happened to be resolutions pertaining to internet communion yet to be voted on by the body, and that the CTCR and seminary faculties have already weighed in. And to my knowledge, none of them agree with Pastor McIntosh and President Newman that this practice should be done in our churches.
Hopefully, this whole uproar about internet communion will be nothing more than an eyebrow-raising little episode in LCMS history that future generations will find quaint when they read about the synod’s 21st century history. And in the short term, I hope that our synod will find some way, even with our convoluted polity, to enforce biblical, confessional, and catholic doctrine and practice, and facilitate the restoration of a genuine Eucharistic piety and of yearning for its frequent reception in our churches, an ethos that would make internet communion - not to mention the practice of churches withholding the Sacrament of the Altar for three weeks out of the month - unthinkable.