Guest essay: On Lay Consecration of the Sacrament by Noah Hahn

Can a layman consecrate and administer the Lord’s Supper? The traditional Lutheran answer is “yes”: a layman can administer the Sacraments without compromising what the Sacraments are. Of course, AC XIV might mean that laymen should not do this; but that’s a “may” issue, not a “can” issue.

At FCSD VII we read, “even though I should pronounce over all bread the words: This is Christ’s body, nothing, of course, would result therefrom” (78). This is because merely speaking words is not enough to make a Sacrament. Rather, the condition for a Sacrament is the keeping of Jesus’ entire institution:

The recitation of the words of institution of Christ alone does not make a sacrament if the entire action of the Supper, as it was instituted by Christ, is not observed (as when the consecrated bread is not distributed, received, and partaken of, but is enclosed, sacrificed, or carried about), but the command of Christ, This do (which embraces the entire action or administration in this Sacrament), that in an assembly of Christians bread and wine are taken, consecrated, distributed, received, eaten, drunk, and the Lord’s death is shown forth at the same time) must be observed unseparated and inviolate, as also St. Paul places before our eyes the entire action of the breaking of bread or of distribution and reception (83–84).

This is why merely saying the Verba over any bread at any time doesn't bring about the bodily presence of Jesus.

Note that this is a bit different than the Lutheran denial that Sacraments are efficacious “ex opere operato.” Lutherans use this language to deny that Sacraments magically confer forgiveness apart from faith in the recipient. Here, we are asking what is necessary to bring about the Sacrament in the first place (what I will refer to as a “valid Sacrament”).

If keeping the entire institution is what's actually necessary for a valid Sacrament, we have to ask whether a lay celebrant fails to keep the entire institution. Are there any qualifications on who can administer Holy Communion? The above passage merely assumes that a “priest” will be administering. It does not state this. Nor does it imply that the attributes a layman lacks are necessary for the sacrament to be what it is. And indeed, there seems to be no obvious Scriptural warrant for thinking that being a pastor is a necessary condition for a genuine Lord’s Supper per Jesus’ institution.

One might object that the Supper was, in the Gospels, given most immediately to the Twelve—whereas Baptism was given to a larger group of disciples, implying that part of its institution was its administration being confined to a more exclusive set of Christians (pastors). But why should we think the Supper was instituted with only the Twelve present? Scripture does not say this, any more than it says Baptism or Absolution were given only to the Twelve. And if that’s so, then all three Sacraments stand or fall together: either all lay Sacraments are valid, or none of them are (not even emergency Baptism). Moreover, why think the Twelve, rather than the Seventy-two, are the archetypal pastors?

We may compare the Lutheran position on lay-administered Sacraments with the Roman Catholic one. Thomas Aquinas (ST III.67.3) holds the view that a layman can administer a genuine Baptism. Since “adults cannot otherwise than by Baptism receive a full remission both of guilt and of its punishment, . . . it was ordained . . . that the minister of Baptism should be anyone, even not in orders, lest from lack of being baptized, man should suffer loss of his salvation.” After all, God wants all men to be saved.

Not so for the Lord’s Supper (ST III.82.1). Aquinas is familiar with the argument that the power to effect a Sacrament is in the words (regardless of who says them), but he insists that “the sacramental power is in several things, and not merely in one. . . . the consecrating power is not merely in the words, but likewise in the power delivered to the priest in his consecration and ordination.” Upon ordination, “he is put upon a level with them to whom the Lord said: ‘Do this for a commemoration of Me.’” This Sacrament is such that it is “performed only as in the person of Christ,” and so its celebration requires a special power bestowed by Christ. Not so for Baptism, it would seem.

Lutheran theologians have traditionally rejected this line of thought, holding that the Lord’s Supper would be genuine under a layman. A few quotations from Walther make this clear:

Although almost all orthodox Lutheran theologians declare that no layman should administer Holy Communion, and we agree heartily with them, one must not think that a common Christian is not to administer Holy Communion because he could not bring it about, that this necessarily calls for an ordained pastor! By no means! The reason is that in the case of the Lord's Supper no genuine case of necessity can arise (The Congregation’s Right to Choose Its Own Pastor, trans. Kramer, 123).

This unambiguous assertion is in concert with Melanchthon’s teaching that “wherever there is a true church, the right to elect and ordain ministers necessarily exists. Just as in a case of necessity even a layman absolves, and becomes the minister and pastor of another” (Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope, 67).

Walther implies the same In Church and Ministry, where he quotes Luther’s letter to Wolfgang Brauer. This implies that Walther’s position derives from Luther himself:

“The first Christians, mentioned in Acts, did not administer the Sacrament individually in the houses, but they came together. And though they might have done it, such an example is no longer to be followed today, just as it cannot be permitted that today Christians have all things in common as was the case with the first Christians. For now the Gospel is spread throughout the world, as are the sacraments also” (Church and Ministry, trans. Mueller, 173).

Luther’s concession that the early Christians “might have” held Lord's Suppers in the home at least implies that the Sacrament would have been genuine. This is made even clearer as Walther quotes one Zacharias Grapius, an obscure 17th-century metaphysician and theologian:

The laymen are priests and apt to perform all ecclesiastical functions of the ministry by virtue of an inward ability. So also they can administer the Lord’s Supper. We must not think that a sacrament is a less valid sacrament when a layman administers it, moved perhaps by an emergency or an error (Church and Ministry, 210-11).

The doctrine is elaborated at length in Walther’s citation of Gnesio-Lutheran Tilemann Heshusius on the question, a quotation which is worth reproducing at length:

There can be no doubt that in an emergency, when no duly called pastor can be obtained, every Christian has the power and is permitted, according to God’s Word and out of Christian love, to attend to the ministry of the Word by preaching the divine Word and administering the sacraments. . . . when some Christians are in a place where no appointed pastor is to be had; or when some Christians, for the sake of the truth, are held captive or are in peril on the sea; or when some Christians are among the Turks or in the papacy. . . . or when some Christians have pastors or ministers who publicly exercise tyranny and cruelly persecute the sincere confessors of the truth and thus clearly show that they are not members of the true church, for which reason conscientious Christians must refrain from fellowshiping with them so as not to strengthen their tyranny and help condemn innocent Christians.

In such and similar emergencies, which indeed have often occurred, when sincere pastors whose teaching and confession are sound and in agreement with God’s Word cannot be secured, individual laymen and believing Christians may absolve penitent sinners, comfort the weak with God’s Word, baptize infants, and administer Holy Communion. In such emergencies a Christian should not be troubled about being a busybody in another’s business, but he should know that he is performing a true and due call of God and that his ministry is just as efficacious as if it were ratified by the laying on of hands for the office of the ministry in the whole church.”.

This does not mean that two or three Christians should separate themselves from the true church, avoid the regular called ministers, and cause factions, but I say this of emergency cases when either there are no pastors or those who exist spread false doctrine and so must be avoided. . . . From this it also follows that ordinary Christians, in such cases when no upright minister of the Word is to be had, may preach the Gospel, remit sins, baptize, and administer the Lord’s Supper” (Church and Ministry, 281–282).

Absent evidence to the contrary, the Lutheran position on whether a layman can administer the Sacrament seems clear.

To be sure, a host of passages might be produced from Luther, Chemnitz, and Gerhard (all the way down through Hollaz, as it turns out) arguing that laymen may not or should not do this, but that is a different question. Just because someone can validly administer a Sacrament does not mean he should; and conceding that he can does not “open the door” to conceding that he should, any more than conceding that a woman can preach (which I don’t concede, by the way) opens the door to conceding that she should. This is so even if more souls might be saved as a result (which I also don’t concede). Our calculations about the quantity of saved souls is not an ultimate guide to what is legitimate, even if it’s often a decent guide—as indeed it is, provided the calculation is done soberly and with a view extending past the immediate future.

The “should” question is treated in AC XIV, which states that no one should preach or administer without a regular call. But what is a regular call? Consider a test case:

A church in rural Minnesota does not receive a placement on seminary call day. The church has been vacant for three years, and they only receive a visit from a rostered seminary graduate once every six months. The men of the congregation decide that Carl, the most pious and learned of their number, will begin to preach and administer in their midst indefinitely.

This is the kind of situation that people have in mind when they say laymen should not preach or administer. Since Carl is a layman, he is in violation of AC XIV. But is Carl a layman? His congregation has called him in orderly fashion. Why not consider Carl a bona fide pastor?

The most common objection to considering Carl a genuine pastor is that his congregation has “gone rogue”—that it was disorderly for Carl’s congregation to call him apart from the public approval of other congregations thought to be united with it in doctrine and practice. This is the idea behind district and synodical leadership; a group of congregations all agree to appoint certain men to act as their agents in determining what a trustworthy pastor looks like, and this agreement is what is meant by rite vocatus.

In the first place, requiring respect for such an arrangement seems foreign to Scripture. One does not get the sense that the various congregations planted outside Jerusalem need to derive the legitimacy of their subsequent ordinations from the consent of congregations in other places. That said, such a synodical arrangement, where it exists, may prove useful for quickly identifying orthodoxy—and to the extent that such an arrangement remains a successful good-faith effort of various congregations to maintain the unity of the Spirit, they should be respected. But it may be that there is a shortage of pastors—indicated by the inability of the corporate structure to fill vacancies (as considered at length by Walther). Or it may be that a synodical arrangement has become less useful at identifying orthodox congregations (as in Luther’s day). In either of these scenarios, I can find no compelling Scriptural reason to forbid congregations from ordaining their own. To think that this would necessarily plunge the church into chaos and heresy is precisely equivalent to the Roman view that a hierarchical magisterium is necessary to maintain orthodoxy.