Norman Teigen has left a new comment on your post "Dangerous Turf - The Efficacy of the Word in the M...":
Thanks for mentioning my father's work on the subject of the Consecration. One Missourian told me that B.W.'s book meant the end of receptionism in the Missouri Synod. My father's work is available as a no cost download from LOGIA and your readers are invited to secure a copy. The book and its link are The Lord's Supper in the Theology of Martin Chemnitz by B.W. Teigen.
Norman Teigen
ELS layman (but not an official spokesman, just an ordinary guy)The Wisconsin Synod is now willing to engage doctrinal issues based on the efficacy of the Word in the Means of Grace. That is dangerous turf for them, since recent errors are all based upon the denying that Biblical concept.
Sig Becker's lectures on
Becker still drives the Little Sect on the Prairie crazy on the issue of Consecration. When I was in Ft. Wayne, schlepping Thy Strong Word, one seminarian asked me about Consecration. I said, "If you believe in the efficacy of the Word, as I do, there is no controversy."
The Synodical Conference proved its Enthusiasm by teaching pastors that the elements remain the same until they are received by the communicants, giving this position the name of Receptionism. As B. Teigen showed in the clearest possible way, this was the wrong position, a position condemned by Lutheran Orthodoxy.
But I thought the Synodical Conference was inerrant, infallible, and right just fine?
The Synodical Conference (Missouri Sect, Wisconsin Sect, Little Sect on the Prairie) was conceived in Pietism and born in Enthusiasm. Lutheran Pietism was and is a strange amalgamation of Reformed doctrine and Lutheran doctrine, with Reformed doctrine always emerging over time. Clergy are heading out two exit doors, both marked Enthusiasm - Church Growth and Romanism. Their answer to low church Enthusiasm (CG) is to adopt high church Enthusiasm (Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy).
To say, "We don't know when the Body of Christ is present," is to confess antipathy toward the efficacy of the Word. Some WELS Enthusiasts have proven that by holding a "communion" service without the Consecration. And WELS had women celebrating Holy Communion on their own, too. Why not? Kicking over the traces is fun. Ask Kelm, Becker, Jeske, Bivens, and Valleskey.
So--my ELS brethren and sistern, fellow Lutherans separated by a common faith--if you hate Becker's Receptionism, you have to hate his UOJ as well. If the world is absolved of its sin, without the Word, as Becker imagined, then Consecration is irrelevant. We just don't know.
Let's face it. The UOJ people do not even know when the world was absolved of its sin, so why would they know when two become four in Holy Communion? Either the world was absolved the moment Christ died (one UOJ version) or the moment He arose from the tomb (another UOJ version). I say, Let's fight over the Moment of Absolution to show Lutherans how ludicrous this Midwestern Pietistic notion is.
The guilt-free saints in Hell (J. P. Meyer) will rejoice to have this clarified.
